A Dataset, Software Toolbox, and Interdisciplinary Research Agenda for the Common Foreign and Security Policy

The article introduces a text corpus containing all the legal acts adopted by the European Union from 1 December 2009 till 30 June 2019; it also provides an open-source built-for-purpose software toolbox that can be used to re-create and manipulate the dataset. The dataset, as well as the software toolbox, are publicly available on GitHub at: https://github.com/ndrplz/eurlextoolbox. The article describes the content and possible uses of the dataset and maps out some potential applications thereof. Since EU law plays a key role in virtually all aspects of European integration, we believe that the dataset, by making the legal dimension easily accessible, could be of interest to an interdisciplinary audience. Building on previous literature on text-as-data approaches and qualitative methods applied to EU law, we make the case for an interdisciplinary agenda, and then illustrate it through research questions in a distinctive area of EU foreign affairs: the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP).