Data Europa Python API Docs | dltHub

Build a Data Europa-to-database pipeline in Python using dlt with AI Workbench support for Claude Code, Cursor, and Codex.

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The European Data Portal provides APIs for managing datasets and querying metadata, documented via OpenAPI. Key endpoints include dataset management and SPARQL API for complex queries. The documentation is available on GitLab. The REST API base URL is https://data.europa.eu/api/ and OpenID Connect (EU-Login) / service accounts (Bearer party token) for write endpoints; read-only public endpoints require no auth..

dlt is an open-source Python library that handles authentication, pagination, and schema evolution automatically. dlthub provides AI context files that enable code assistants to generate production-ready pipelines. Install with uv pip install "dlt[workspace]" and start loading Data Europa data in under 10 minutes.


What data can I load from Data Europa?

Here are some of the endpoints you can load from Data Europa:

ResourceEndpointMethodData selectorDescription
searchapi/hub/search/GETresultsFull-text Search API returning paged metadata (use page & limit & q)
registryapi/hub/repo/datasetsGET(top-level array or JSON-LD)Registry API to list datasets and fetch dataset by id (JSON-LD by default)
sparqlsparqlGET(SPARQL result bindings)SPARQL endpoint for arbitrary RDF queries
mqaapi/mqa/cache/GETitemsMetadata Quality Assessment API
api_storeapi-store/ (store endpoints under /api/store)GETvariesFile storage management endpoints (OpenAPI documented)

How do I authenticate with the Data Europa API?

Write/management endpoints use OpenID Connect and require an Authorization: Bearer [party_token] header (party token obtained via service account/EU-Login); public search and SPARQL are readable without auth.

1. Get your credentials

  1. Contact data.europa.eu team via feedback form to request API write access and a service account. 2) Create/obtain a service account and client credentials via EU-Login/OpenID Connect as instructed. 3) Exchange credentials to obtain a party token. 4) Use Authorization: Bearer [party_token] in requests.

2. Add them to .dlt/secrets.toml

[sources.data_europa_source] party_token = "your_party_token_here"

dlt reads this automatically at runtime — never hardcode tokens in your pipeline script. For production environments, see setting up credentials with dlt for environment variable and vault-based options.


How do I set up and run the pipeline?

Set up a virtual environment and install dlt:

uv venv && source .venv/bin/activate uv pip install "dlt[workspace]"

1. Install the dlt AI Workbench:

dlt ai init --agent <your-agent> # <agent>: claude | cursor | codex

This installs project rules, a secrets management skill, appropriate ignore files, and configures the dlt MCP server for your agent. Learn more →

2. Install the rest-api-pipeline toolkit:

dlt ai toolkit rest-api-pipeline install

This loads the skills and context about dlt the agent uses to build the pipeline iteratively, efficiently, and safely. The agent uses MCP tools to inspect credentials — it never needs to read your secrets.toml directly. Learn more →

3. Start LLM-assisted coding:

Use /find-source to load data from the Data Europa API into DuckDB.

The rest-api-pipeline toolkit takes over from here — it reads relevant API documentation, presents you with options for which endpoints to load, and follows a structured workflow to scaffold, debug, and validate the pipeline step by step.

4. Run the pipeline:

python data_europa_pipeline.py

If everything is configured correctly, you'll see output like this:

Pipeline data_europa_pipeline load step completed in 0.26 seconds 1 load package(s) were loaded to destination duckdb and into dataset data_europa_data The duckdb destination used duckdb:/data_europa.duckdb location to store data Load package 1749667187.541553 is LOADED and contains no failed jobs

Inspect your pipeline and data:

dlt pipeline data_europa_pipeline show

This opens the Pipeline Dashboard where you can verify pipeline state, load metrics, schema (tables, columns, types), and query the loaded data directly.


Python pipeline example

This example loads search and registry from the Data Europa API into DuckDB. It mirrors the endpoint and data selector configuration from the table above:

import dlt from dlt.sources.rest_api import RESTAPIConfig, rest_api_resources @dlt.source def data_europa_source(party_token=dlt.secrets.value): config: RESTAPIConfig = { "client": { "base_url": "https://data.europa.eu/api/", "auth": { "type": "bearer", "token": party_token, }, }, "resources": [ {"name": "search", "endpoint": {"path": "api/hub/search/", "data_selector": "results"}}, {"name": "registry", "endpoint": {"path": "api/hub/repo/datasets"}} ], } yield from rest_api_resources(config) def get_data() -> None: pipeline = dlt.pipeline( pipeline_name="data_europa_pipeline", destination="duckdb", dataset_name="data_europa_data", ) load_info = pipeline.run(data_europa_source()) print(load_info)

To add more endpoints, append entries from the resource table to the "resources" list using the same name, path, and data_selector pattern.


How do I query the loaded data?

Once the pipeline runs, dlt creates one table per resource. You can query with Python or SQL.

Python (pandas DataFrame):

import dlt data = dlt.pipeline("data_europa_pipeline").dataset() sessions_df = data.search.df() print(sessions_df.head())

SQL (DuckDB example):

SELECT * FROM data_europa_data.search LIMIT 10;

In a marimo or Jupyter notebook:

import dlt data = dlt.pipeline("data_europa_pipeline").dataset() data.search.df().head()

See how to explore your data in marimo Notebooks and how to query your data in Python with dataset.


What destinations can I load Data Europa data to?

dlt supports loading into any of these destinations — only the destination parameter changes:

DestinationExample value
DuckDB (local, default)"duckdb"
PostgreSQL"postgres"
BigQuery"bigquery"
Snowflake"snowflake"
Redshift"redshift"
Databricks"databricks"
Filesystem (S3, GCS, Azure)"filesystem"

Change the destination in dlt.pipeline(destination="snowflake") and add credentials in .dlt/secrets.toml. See the full destinations list.


Next steps

Continue your data engineering journey with the other toolkits of the dltHub AI Workbench:

  • data-exploration — Build custom notebooks, charts, and dashboards for deeper analysis with marimo notebooks.
  • dlthub-runtime — Deploy, schedule, and monitor your pipeline in production.
dlt ai toolkit data-exploration install dlt ai toolkit dlthub-runtime install

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