Research · Design systems in Europe

The design systems of European states

This is a catalogue of public design systems in Europe. A design system is a shared set of reusable building blocks (buttons, forms, menus), with rules for how they look and, usually, with ready-to-use code. The situation described is as of 19 October 2026. Here you will find, region by region, which system each state has, whether its code is open, under which licence, and what state it is in. At the end are the common patterns and Romania's position.

I checked every code repository on GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket or in the npm registry (the public registry of JavaScript packages), and I opened every documentation site. “Unverified” means that the system is mentioned somewhere, but I could not confirm that it exists publicly. In the “Status” column, the date shows the latest version or update I found. The rules behind these systems are in European rules.

The MIT, Apache-2.0, BSD-3 and ISC licences allow anyone to reuse the code. EUPL is the European Union's public licence. GPL and AGPL require modified versions to remain open. Design tokens are named values (colours, spacing, fonts) through which the same components take on the look of each institution.

1. In brief

2. The institutions of the European Union

ECL has one variant for Commission websites and one for the other institutions and agencies. eUI is the Commission's library for internal applications and includes the ECL components.

3. Western Europe

United Kingdom

The GOV.UK Design System, run by the Government Digital Service (GDS, the UK government's digital service), is the most frequently cited model; its strength lies in patterns tested with users. Ministries extend it rather than replace it.

Worth noting: MOJ has patterns for internal casework applications. ICDS comes, unusually, from the security services. ONS covers statistics and questionnaires. The Welsh system is bilingual. The Parliament's system covers the legislature, and Hackney is an example from local government.

Ireland

Netherlands

Everything uses the NL Design System architecture: shared components, with each organisation's theme applied through design tokens. Components go through three stages: Community (proposed by the community), Candidate and Hall of Fame (validated). The themes repository has design tokens for about 45 organisations. The central government has no official library; its visual identity has been implemented unofficially, by a community.

Belgium

The Flemish system complies with WCAG 2.2 (the international web accessibility standard). Partners receive training and audits.

Luxembourg

Renow (with GovBar and logo.public.lu) is an active shared content management framework (CMS), not an open library of components.

France

Administrations must request approval to use DSFR. The Marianne font has its own conditions. The emphasis is on accessibility, following the French reference framework RGAA.

4. Central Europe

Germany

There is no single federal system. The federal government and the Länder have chosen KERN and Digitale Dachmarke (the shared digital brand: header, eagle, the gov.de domain), built on KoliBri.

KoliBri offers accessibility-first components, as web components (components independent of any framework). KERN comes from Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein and will become a product of the IT-Planungsrat (the joint IT planning council of the federal government and the Länder) from 1 January 2027, co-funded by the federal government and all the Länder. Berlin's system is mandatory, but not public.

Austria

At federal level there is only the Federal Chancellery's visual identity (a PDF guide, March 2025), with no component library. Vienna's library (HTML snippets) is mandatory for wien.gv.at projects.

Switzerland

The federal system is mandatory for admin.ch websites, through the CD Bund v9.0 manual.

Czechia

Since 30 April 2026, all new materials must follow the manual of the unified visual style (JVS).

Slovakia

Derived from GOV.UK, ID-SK is mandatory by law. On 8 June 2026 a new guide on creating and modifying components was published.

Hungary

It is co-funded by EU funds and publishes an llms.txt file for artificial intelligence tools.

Poland

Design System Gov.pl (Bootstrap 4) is inactive: a beta version with files from June 2022. A successor portal, “Multiportal RP”, is planned. I found no public system for the mObywatel app.

5. The Nordic and Baltic countries

Denmark

Free of charge for all Danish public institutions. It is based on the US system (see The American system (USWDS)).

Norway

Designsystemet has a theme for each organisation and a theme generator; it is registered as a Digital Public Good. Aksel combines the design system with a knowledge portal on accessibility and is worth studying. Punkt publishes “skills” for the Claude assistant.

Sweden

There is no national system. The Försäkringskassan (FK) system has been open to other agencies since 2024 and targets WCAG 2.2 AA.

Finland

HDS has detailed accessibility documentation and has received a design award.

Iceland

It is built in the open, in the same repository as the national services.

Estonia

TEDI was opened to all state agencies in 2026. CVI appears to have been replaced by TEDI (not confirmed).

Latvia and Lithuania

I found no public system. Latvia only has a presentation of the redesign of the latvija.gov.lv portal (2024–2025).

6. Southern Europe

Italy

It is the most complete public system in southern Europe. The model websites for town halls, schools, health authorities and museums are built on it.

The themes cover WordPress, Plone, Drupal, Django, Next.js and Astro. Puglia is a regional example built on the guidelines of AgID (the Italian digitalisation agency).

Spain

DESY, based on GOV.UK, is the most mature open regional system in Spain.

Portugal

Decree-Law 49/2024 makes migration mandatory. The Figma kit must be requested by email.

Greece

Cyprus

Built on the GOV.UK model, with which it also shares a collaboration repository. It is tested against EN 301 549, the European accessibility standard.

7. Eastern and South-Eastern Europe

Republic of Moldova. MUD (the Unified Design Model) includes foundations, components and templates (in Figma) and was approved by Government Decision 677/2025. It also covers the shared services MPass, MSign and MPay. The code is public on GitHub, under the MIT licence (egov-moldova/design-system); the documentation texts on mud.egov.md keep their own licence (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).

Ukraine. The code of the Diia interface is open, but there is no documentation site. A third-party blog says that the Figma files were public and were then closed (unverified).

Armenia. Henaket is inspired by the Danish system and built with the support of the Danish agency. Sources describe it as a “digital public good”.

8. Romania in detail

Romania does not have an official government design system.

• The Romanian Authority for Digitalisation (ADR), the government body responsible for digitalising public administration, only publishes pages about website accessibility (adr.gov.ro). I found no GitHub organisation for ADR or for the Government.
• PL-x 300/2026. In February 2026 a bill for the „Sistemul Unic de Design Digital (SUDD)” (“Single Digital Design System (SUDD)”) (art. 2(f)) was submitted to the Senate, the upper chamber of the Romanian Parliament; ADR would administer the system. The Senate adopted it on 1 April 2026, with 96 votes in favour and one against. Since April, the bill has been before the committees of the Chamber of Deputies, the lower chamber. Details: The bill's legislative journey and Analysis of the bill.
• The ADR project. On 25 June 2026, ADR launched an 18-month project, funded by the EU through the Technical Support Instrument, on user-centred digital public services. It will produce a guide and a few redesigned pilot services, not a design system (juridice.ro).
• Code for Romania (a non-governmental organisation): reusable-components (React, MPL-2.0, last activity in November 2024) and website-factory (Laravel/Tailwind, MPL-2.0, active in October 2026).
• What exists: visual identity manuals (2026) for EU-funded programmes: the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR) and the Smart Growth, Digitalisation and Financial Instruments Programme (PoCIDIF); the accessibility law, Government Emergency Ordinance (OUG) 112/2018, which requires the EN 301 549 standard; and ADR's „Ghidul tehnic privind accesibilitatea” (“Technical guide on accessibility”).
• The closest point of reference in Romanian is MUD from the Republic of Moldova (approved in 2025, with public code under MIT).

The finding: Romania is one of the few large EU states without a public design system. There is, however, a bill in Parliament and an EU-funded service design project at ADR.

9. Countries without an official design system

The situation in October 2026. In the EU, with no national system: Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Slovenia, Malta, Latvia, Lithuania; with only part of one: Belgium, Austria, Luxembourg, Sweden.

10. Withdrawn or abandoned systems

Not updated, but not officially withdrawn: dfe-frontend (since 2024-05), nidirect-frontend (since 2024-02), e-gov/cvi (since 2024-12), govgr-bootstrap-theme-kit (since 2024-01) and Gov UI in Poland (since 2022).

11. Common patterns

Four architecture families:

1. Derived from GOV.UK (HTML/CSS and Nunjucks, with progressive enhancement: the page works even without JavaScript). Examples: the UK ministries, Cyprus, Slovakia (ID-SK), Aragon (DESY), the first Irish system. Cheap to adopt, with proven research behind them.
2. Federated, with themes through design tokens (shared components, a theme for each organisation). Examples: NL Design System, Designsystemet (Norway), KERN/KoliBri (Germany). Suited to countries with autonomous town halls and regions.
3. A core of web components, with adapters for frameworks. Examples: KoliBri, gov.cz, DÁP (Hungary), Dev Kit Italia, Digi (Sweden), ICDS, DINTEL. A strong recent trend: suppliers are not tied to a particular framework.
4. A single framework (React, Vue or Angular). Examples: Suomi.fi, Ireland (React), Switzerland (Vue), FK (Vue), eUI (Angular), Ágora (React). Faster to build, but it ties suppliers to a single technology.

Trends in 2025–2026:

• The law is keeping pace. Portugal (Decree-Law 49/2024), Slovakia, the Republic of Moldova (Government Decision 677/2025), Switzerland (CD Bund) and Germany (KERN, funded by the IT-Planungsrat from 2027) have made their systems mandatory or given them formal funding. France restricts DSFR to state institutions.
• MIT is the most widely used licence (about 40 systems in this catalogue). EUPL, the European Union's licence, comes second (about 16 systems, including NL Design System, KoliBri, KERN, gov.cz, DESY, ECL and Diia).
• Moving to WCAG 2.2 AA ahead of the legal obligation (Flanders, FK and others), while waiting for EN 301 549 V4.1.1 to be cited in the Official Journal.
• Preparing for artificial intelligence: DÁP (Hungary) publishes an llms.txt file, and Punkt (Oslo) publishes “skills” for Claude.
• Some systems are closing (Flanders v3, Inera, DINTEL), unlike the general trend towards open code.
• Some agencies' systems are opening up to other agencies (FK in Sweden, TEDI in Estonia, Designsystemet in Norway).

What is worth studying, by need:

12. Lists and catalogues

• ctdesign/gov-design-systems-list: the best maintained (June 2026).
• alexpate/awesome-design-systems: general, active, with a few government systems.
• platformland/government-design-systems: inactive since 2022.
• adamsilver/gov-design-systems-list: not updated since 2018; United Kingdom only.
• Civic Tech Field Guide.
• GOV.UK: Resources and tools.
• GovStack design specifications: specifications shared by several countries.
• component.gallery, designsystemsrepo.com, adele.uxpin.com: general catalogues, with few government systems.

Sources

Every row in the tables links directly to the primary source: the system's documentation site and code repository. In addition:

• GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket and the npm registry, for checking repositories and versions (19 October 2026).
• Modelul Unitar de Design and the MUD code on GitHub.
• Romanian Authority for Digitalisation.
• The ADR project on digital public services (juridice.ro).
• Henaket: the ISAA announcement and the ITU GovStack page.

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