CIE 15:2004 states CIELAB was recommended as a perceptually more uniform alternative to CIEXYZ, in the CIE's own words

CIE 15:2004, Technical Report: Colorimetry (3rd edition), Section 8.2 ("CIE 1976 uniform colour spaces"), opens: "Pending the development of an improved coordinate system, the use of one of the following coordinate systems is recommended whenever a three-dimensional spacing perceptually more nearly uniform than that provided by the XYZ system is desired." Section 8.2.1.1 then defines CIELAB itself as a "Three-dimensional, approximately uniform, colour space produced by plotting in rectangular coordinates, L*, a*, b*..."

This supplies the CIE's own primary wording for a claim claim-cielab-designed-to-remedy-ciexyz-perceptual-nonuniformity previously rested entirely on a single Tier-4 Wikipedia paraphrase: CIEXYZ's spacing is explicitly non-uniform, and CIELAB is the CIE-recommended, self-described "approximately uniform" successor. The CIE's own qualifier — "approximately uniform," sitting inside the space's very definition — is worth keeping: the technical report does not claim CIELAB achieves perfect perceptual uniformity, only that it improves on CIEXYZ. That admitted, residual gap is what CIEDE2000 later corrects (see claim-cie-15-2004-blue-region-nonuniformity-motivates-ciede2000-rotation).

entity-cie-international-commission-on-illumination is the standards body behind both the original 1976 recommendation and this 2004 report restating it; question-verify-cielab-perceptual-uniformity-and-blue-hue-nonuniformity is the verification thread this note closes.