The codebook for the 1st wave EXCEPTIUS project dataset (v.1.0) tracks all exceptional measures in the field of democratic governance/ human rights and international cooperation issued by national authorities in European Union (EU) countries (including UK and Switzerland, excluding Iceland) in order to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic from January to June 2020. The dataset also provides data on the implementation modalities of such measures. The data collection started in September 2020; since then, the codebook was revised twice due to the increasing complexity and granularity of the measures that countries had been implementing.