Brussels, 25 November 2020
On the 25th of November, the European Commission published a proposal for a Regulation establishing a Data Governance Act.
This Act aims at facilitating the sharing of industrial and non-personal data across the EU and seeks to stimulate the re-use of public sector data as well as commercial data-sharing between businesses.
The Regulation announces the establishment of a European Data Innovation Board which will focus on implementing the Data Governance Framework spelled out in the Regulation. This board will consist of representatives from Member States, the Commission and representatives from industries such as transport. This Board will particularly focus on establishing best practices for the re-use of data as well as cross-sectoral standardization.
The Act contains a number of conditions that companies or organizations need to meet when they want to provide data-sharing services. For example, the data-sharing service should ensure structural separation between data-sharing and any other services the entity is providing. That is, the data-sharing service should be provided through a legal entity that is separate from any other activities of the company/entity.
A notification procedure will oblige data-sharing services to notify their activities to the competent Member State authorities. Similarly, the Commission proposal would require Member States to designate competent authorities to take care of this notification framework.