European Land Information Service – EULIS - EC GI & GIS Portal

European Land Information Service – EULIS
Stefan Gustafsson, EULIS
Lantmäteriet, Sweden
The EULIS project aims to develop a demonstrator of a pan-European Land information
service. In the project Land information agencies from Austria, England and Wales, Finland,
Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway, Scotland and Sweden and the Lund University in
Sweden co-operate. The EC eContent programme supports the project.
Aims
1 (4)
Providing land information cross-border will in the long run have positive effects on financial
markets, gaining transparency and business possibilities for new actors in the up to day rather
closed national markets.
In a shorter perspective information from other countries will facilitate regular commercial
and governmental activities on a national level.
Obstacles
There are certain obstacles involved in making this type of information accessible over
borders.
Traditionally, transactions regarding real property have been dealt with almost exclusively on
a national basis. International transactions have been carried through in close collaboration
with partners contracted in the country concerned.
One of the main obstacles is the understanding of the information itself. The information is
referred to different jurisdictions, in different cultural and lingual areas, causing difficulties
when trying to find out what the register contents stand for.
The information in the land and cadastre registers is not standardised. Register contents differ
between countries as well as format and technical solutions.
Organisational structures and differing routines might also cause trouble. There is no common
knowledge of which organisations provide the information concerned and how to do.
Different conditions regarding access to register contents and different implementation of
privacy protection in the European countries may also hinder a free movement of information.
The EULIS approach to a common market for land information
The EULIS project is not trying to achieve a complete solution for all demands that can be
addressed on a European market concerning real property and mortgage credit. But the results
of the project are thought to show how the first steps towards this can be taken.

The demonstrator will conceptually consist of two parts, one common part explaining the
information and one part presenting the information from the national registers.
By combining land information from different providers, completed with explanations of the
information content, and make it accessible through reliable current national routines, i.e.
single sign on, the information retrieval will be simple from a users point of view.
Understanding the information
2 (4)
Some of the main obstacles for cross-border transactions concerning real property are the
divergences in the legal context in the European countries. Basically similar, concepts and
especially routines have developed into a wide range of different procedures when property is
to be transferred, mortgaged, executed and taxed.
Therefore, to facilitate cross-border actions, it is necessary to provide information on the legal
system itself, as well as routines concerning the most common transactions.
There are several current initiatives concerning standards for description of land and property
information, as well as the legal framework that rules routines and activities in the area. The
EULIS project will not, nor can, wait for the results from these initiatives or disregard future
results of the work. What we are trying to do meanwhile, and in the project, is to describe the
information in the registers, what the information stands for and the most common
transactions concerning the information. The way we do this is to provide core information
for all participating countries in a standardised and unified way in the service.
Naturally, a complete service should provide all information in the user’s native language. To
achieve this is however not only a question of translation, but furthermore a question of
explanation. The conceptual meaning of a word very often differs between jurisdictions. To
exclude linguistic facilities would make the service difficult to adopt for coming users. In
EULIS we have not gone for a complete solution, as it should demand far too much resources
compared with the project budget. In the project we have chosen to make a general wordlist in
English linked to all participants’ languages, explaining the most common concepts dealing
with real property and property transactions. The register outputs are also translated to
English with the exception of the register information itself.
Technical solution
The technology used in the demonstrator is a portal providing core information and
connections to register services from the national systems. The portal technique is used not
only to facilitate the implementation, but also to make it possible to start and join the service
as easy as possible for additional national information providers.

The portal architecture enables
Fig. 1 The EULIS Portal
− A slimmed EULIS system with most of the critical functionality in the national systems
− Reasonable maintenance costs for a possible permanent service
− Different levels of ambition when connecting to the service. The easiest solution is to
present the current HTML interface from the national service. This can later on be
developed further in several steps.
− An adaptable connection to the service for future partners
− Development in smaller steps, making it easier to take care of user demands as they
develop.
The functionality of the service can be described as follows:
Step User action System action
1 The user logs in to a
national service
where he/she
already is a licensed
user
2 The user chooses
the EULIS service
3 The user chooses
origin of
Authentication and authorisation of the user is made in
the national system. The only need for accessing the
EULIS service is that the user is a licensed user in a
national system taking part in the service.
Logon to the EULIS portal. In the portal, the national
system is considered as a valid user. Information about
the transaction (identification of the user) is included for
invoice purposes. Access to meta data about registers,
legislation and land transactions is provided by the
portal.
Logon to the national system concerned. The EULIS
portal is a valid user in the different national systems.
3 (4)

information wanted
4 The user collects the
information wanted
5 The user is invoiced
by the national
system.
User involvement
The national system presents the information through the
portal to the user and returns information for invoice.
The portal has functionality to keep track of transactions
so that payment goes to the right information provider.
4 (4)
Recently the first prototype of the demonstrator has been presented to selected representatives
from different user categories in the participating countries. Their opinions will continuously
be collected and ideas and proposals from them will influence the coming development of the
demonstrator. From the first contacts we can say that making the service visible tends to
increase the interest for this type of service on a, up today, rather unworked market.
What will happen after project’s finish?
The project is planned to end in June 2004, after a 6 months evaluation of the demonstrator.
The demonstrator will not be a completed system that can be put in production on a regular
basis. The project will however describe the additional development such a permanent
solution will demand.
The current EULIS organisations are all by now focused on making the EULIS service a
reality after the project ends. In this future service also other land information agencies in
Europe are invited to take part. The project has therefore invited all land agencies in the EU
member and candidate countries to follow the project and to go into deeper discussions on the
future.