Our AI
Rel-I stands for innovation and responsible use of AI. We believe AI is not merely a cost saver but opens possibilities not accessible to researchers in the past. Thorough design, oversight, and a deep understanding of the tools are key. Rel-I uses a series of off-the-shelf frontier tools to enhance its work. We also build and tailor our own solutions, such as our flagship ‘Bertha’.
The CBAI project
Bertha’s cost-benefit components build on the feasibility study “CBAI: AI-powered tool for costs and benefits analysis”.
Funded by the Brussels-Capital Region – Innoviris (grant 2025-FST-108).
Project summary, participants and contact below ↓
Bertha – our AI platform for EU policy analysis
The Better Regulation Tools for High-performance Analysis platform, short ‘Bertha’, is Rel-I’s in-house AI platform, built to make evidence for EU policymaking faster to find, easier to check, and to control whether data flows outside the EU or not. It was built based on an Innoviris co-funded project called ‘CBAI’.
One library of evidence
Over 2,800 Commission evaluations, impact assessments, and supporting studies and 3,500 national evaluations, searchable in one place.
Policy analyses – evaluations, fitness checks, impact assessments and staff working documents
EU legislation – some 24,000 acts with their lifecycles, links and evaluations
Member State analyses – evaluations by country, fund, theme and period
National legislation – national acts transposing EU directives
Simplification – claimed versus documented savings, burdens and measures
Cost-benefit database
At its core is a curated and quality-checked database of more than 20,000 costs and benefits extracted from EU evaluations and impact assessments, which lets us benchmark impacts across policy areas. Each comes with its figure, source, page and exact quote, is classified according to the Better Regulation Toolbox, and is linked to the legal provisions it stems from.
Document search, text analysis, and transposition
Bertha searches curated databases and their underlying documents directly, answers questions on the whole library, and every citation is verified against its source. Moreover, it includes targeted tools to check aspects such as transposition and simplification options.
Frequently asked questions
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Bertha runs on European infrastructure with sovereign European AI capabilities.
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Our experts review everything it produces.
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Every citation is verified against its source document, and the cost-benefit database is curated and quality-checked.
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It supports our impact assessments, evaluations and regulatory cost studies.
CBAI project: public summary
The cost-benefit components at the heart of Bertha build on the feasibility study of Rel-I “CBAI: AI-powered tool for costs and benefits analysis”, in which the Centre d’excellence en technologies de l’information et de la communication (CETIC) supported the development of the prototype and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) provided scientific advice.
Objectives
Develop a domain-specific generative-AI assistant that helps policy professionals identify, classify and quantify the costs and benefits of EU policy interventions with greater rigour, consistency and efficiency, grounded in publicly available EU impact assessments and evaluations, aligned with the Better Regulation Toolbox and designed to empower, not replace, experts, with every output traceable to its source.
Impact for Brussels
Anchoring high-skilled expertise at the intersection of policy analysis and AI in the Region, strengthening Brussels as the home of high-quality, proximity-based policy support to the EU institutions, building local know-how in responsible and European-sovereign AI for the public sector, and making the evidence behind EU regulation more transparent and reusable for administrations, researchers and civil society, including at regional and local level.
Results
A quality-certified database of costs and benefits extracted from some 300 European Commission impact assessments, a retrieval layer over the full text of evaluations and impact assessments, and a workflow that turns a legislative text into a Better Regulation overview of costs and benefits with verified sources — delivered as a working product on EU cloud infrastructure and in daily use in Rel-I’s work for the European Commission.
Project
Title: CBAI: AI-powered tool for costs and benefits analysis
Programme: Feasibility Study (Innoviris)
Grant: 2025-FST-108
Co-funding: 70% of eligible costs, up to EUR 49,900 (Innoviris)
Duration: 1 October 2025 – 31 July 2026
Participants
Rel-I SRL – beneficiary and coordinator, Brussels
CETIC – subcontractor, support to prototype development
Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) – subcontractor, scientific advice
Coordinator contact
Andreas Pauer, Managing Partner
Rel-I SRL
Rue du Boulet 5, box 3, 1000 Brussels
info@rel-i.eu
Projet subsidié par la Région de Bruxelles-Capitale – Innoviris. Funded by the Brussels-Capital Region – Innoviris (grant 2025-FST-108). innoviris.brussels
Interested in learning more about Bertha?
Want to see how Bertha could support your next study or evaluation?