European Legal Design Action

The European Legal Design Action (ELDA) strengthens Europe by making laws, regulations, and contracts work better in practice. Across Europe, these frameworks have become so complex that they often hinder rather than help their users, reducing innovation and competitiveness. ELDA unites legal and regulatory experts, designers, technologists, policymakers, businesses, and scholars to co-create next-generation tools and solutions that make law understandable, actionable, and easier to comply with, building on the Better Regulation and REFIT agendas.

“This achievement reflects the growing importance of legal design, stakeholder engagement and innovative approaches to addressing complex societal and regulatory challenges.” 
– Ebru Metin, Researcher at TalTech, Project Lead, ELDA

“ELDA fills a genuine gap in the field. For the first time, we have a coordinated, cross-border effort bringing together serious researchers and practitioners to advance legal design at scale. This is both overdue and significant." 
– Kanan Dhru, Researcher, Multilevel Regulation research group and Management Committee Member, ELDA

Background project 

The main challenge ELDA addresses is the complexity of European legal, regulatory and contractual frameworks governing technological, environmental, business and societal evolution. This complexity has an adverse effect on their interpretation, application and enforcement. ELDA advances this evolution by combining proactive legal thinking with design, plain language, and AI-assisted tools to ensure that European laws, regulations, and contracts genuinely support clarity, compliance, and sustainable, responsible corporate behaviour. ELDA aims to address the challenge of regulatory, legal and contractual complexities head-on. In doing so, it contributes to a more transparent, effective, and innovation-friendly environment - one that enables people and organisations across Europe to operate responsibly, compete fairly, and achieve sustainable success.

Purpose 

The overall aim of the Action is to build a pan-European, interdisciplinary network that develops, tests, and disseminates innovative approaches for managing legal, regulatory and contractual complexity through legal design.

Target 

ELDA combines legal and regulatory expertise and scholarship, design thinking, social sciences, and technological expertise, and seeks to make complex legal frameworks more usable, actionable, and future-proof for diverse stakeholders. By reducing the complexity of regulations and contracts, ELDA will promote greater participation, especially for SMEs, thereby fostering economic growth and resilience. Furthermore, ELDA’s emphasis on inclusivity, particularly the involvement of Inclusiveness Target Countries (ITCs), ensures that these socioeconomic benefits will be distributed equitably across Europe, promoting social cohesion and trust in legal institutions.

Method 

ELDA uses innovative approach fusing human-centred design principles with new plain language standards and using digital tools to improve the understandability and actionability of legal information4 represents a significant scientific contribution. Human-centred design involves addressing the needs and experiences of users and stakeholders and actively involving them in the design process. Co-creating methodologies and tools will lead to innovative legal design practices and interdisciplinary methods that can be replicated and adapted across jurisdictions.

Results 

The Action’s outputs are designed for practical policy uptake at both national and EU levels. For example, the model clauses and toolkits developed through WG3 and WG5 could inform national transpositions of EU directives by providing ready-to-use, plain language contractual templates that support regulatory compliance. Similarly, the regulatory communication prototypes and guidelines produced by WG2 can be integrated into Better Regulation practices such as public consultations and impact assessments helping public authorities communicate legal rules more clearly to citizens and businesses. Beyond producing intellectual outputs, the Action will invest in building a sustainable European community of practice that connects legal designers, scholars, practitioners, and policymakers. COST offers unique tools for empowering Young Researchers and Innovators (YRIs) through leadership roles, mobility grants, and training activities.

Impact 

The expected impacts of the Action follow directly from its objectives. By developing interdisciplinary frameworks and applying legal design methods to regulatory communication and contracts, the Action will generate new scientific knowledge, comparative evidence, and practical tools to improve regulatory accessibility and implementation (scientific and societal impacts). Through targeted stakeholder engagement and the co-creation of toolkits, model clauses, and policy briefs, the Action will support evidence-based policy development at national and EU levels (policy impact). Capacity-building activities such as training schools, STSMs, and annual conferences will foster interdisciplinary collaboration, inclusiveness, and YRI leadership, ensuring long-term sustainability of results (capacitybuilding impact).

Duration

Start date: 14/09/2026
End date: 13/09/2030

Funding 

Funded by COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology)

Collaboration

Johannes Kepler University, Austria
New Bulgarian University, Bulgaria
Uclan Cyprus Limited, Cyprus
Cyprus University of Technology, Cyprus
Lexpert Ltd, Finland
Aalto University, Finland
Technical University of Munich, Germany
National Technical University of Athens, Greece
Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia 
Norwegian Business School, Norway
The Arctic University of Norway Faculty of Law, Norway
Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Hungary
Alma Mater Studiorum - Universita di Bologna, Italy
Universita degli Studi di Palermo, Italy
The Hague University of Applied Sciences, Netherlands
UNIWERSYTET WARSZAWSKI, Poland
SWPS University, Poland
Institute of Social Sciences, Serbia
Singidunum University, Serbia
Univerzita Komenskeho V Bratislave, Slovakia
Legal Shake SL, Spain
Universitat De Les Illes Balears, Spain
Stockholm University, Sweden
Fachhochschule Nordwestschweiz, Switzerland
Université de Lausanne, Switzerland
Ozyegin Universitesi, Türkiye
Bilkent University, Türkiye
Scientific Research Center of Independent Forensic of the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine, Ukraine

Team 

At THUAS : Kanan Dhru
List of other management committee members

Contact 

Kanan Dhru, e-mail : [email protected]