Correction (April 16, 2026): The original version of this article reported that the European Commission had missed the deadline for the implementing act on the European Repository. That was incorrect. The Commission adopted Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/818 on April 9, 2026 — one day before the deadline. We have updated this article accordingly.
What happened
On April 10, 2026, a legal deadline expired. Art. 13(6) PAR required the European Commission to adopt implementing acts by this date — defining the common data structure, standardised metadata, authentication, and a public API for the European Repository for online political advertisements.
The Commission delivered: on April 9, 2026, one day before the deadline, REP was published in the Official Journal of the EU. It enters into force twenty days after publication — expected late April 2026.
What the implementing act covers
The regulation defines three core areas:
Data structure and metadata. Four groups of metadata elements: identification of the advertisement, permanent URLs, language, and the transparency notice elements as set out in Annex II IR. Metadata must be encoded in UTF-8 and structured according to published schema definitions.
Authentication. Two phases: EU Login for identification, followed by an onboarding process. Only onboarded users receive API credentials.
API. REST and SOAP, JSON, XML and JSON-LD. JWT authentication over HTTPS with the latest stable TLS. Each submission receives a unique identifier; corrections reuse the same base identifier with an incremented version tag.
What this means for publishers
The implementing act defines the requirements for the repository — not the repository itself. There is still no portal, no API endpoints, and no technical documentation. The Commission will announce the repository's launch date separately on the public portal.
Publishers must upload every political ad within 72 hours (Art. 13(4) PAR). Transparency notices must link to the repository (Art. 12(1)(i) PAR). Very large online platforms must provide access to their own ad repositories through it (Art. 13(2) PAR).
Until the repository goes live, these obligations cannot be fully met.
What we are doing
The Taurus already implements the complete transparency notice as defined in Art. 12 PAR — all 13 mandatory fields from points (a) through (m). Every published notice gets a permanent URL and a QR code. The data is structured, machine-readable, and versioned.
Our data structure is already aligned with the regulation's requirements. The metadata elements defined in REP correspond to the fields our wizard covers. The versioning model — base identifier with an incremented version tag — matches our existing system.
As soon as the Commission launches the repository and its API, The Taurus will integrate with it. We expect to be among the first providers to automatically submit transparency notices to the repository.
What comes next
The legal framework is now complete: the regulation ( PAR), the format requirements ( IR), and the technical requirements for the repository ( REP). What is missing is the implementation — the repository itself with its API endpoints and schema definitions.
Transparency in political advertising is not optional. It is a prerequisite for informed democratic decisions. The legal framework is in place — now the infrastructure must follow.