The Estonian Presidency will attempt to reach a general approach on the draft regulation on a free flow of non-personal data by the end of the year. It will present a new compromise on Tuesday, 5 December, on the basis of the positions presented by the ministers for telecommunications on Monday.
The aim of the text is too put an end to unfair restrictions on the free flow of data. In practice, it will ban member states from introducing data localisation requirements, except for public security reasons. The member states that wish to benefit from this “derogation” will have to notify and justify it to the Commission.
During the Telecommunications Council on Monday, 4 December, European ministers gave their support to the main principles in the draft regulation. They also endorsed the timetable agreed by the heads of state and government for the deadline to reaching agreement on this text by “June 2018”. The Estonian Minister for Entrepreneurship and Information Technology, Urve Palo, stated, “Some European countries were rather hesitant to begin with. Today’s meeting clearly showed that all member states strongly support the data free flow initiative and see its economic potential. We developed a common understanding that without the free flow data, we will not be able to create a single digital market in Europe”.
Scope of exceptions in question
France, Spain, Germany and Slovakia, however, called for the scope of exceptions to be extended to other sectors, such as public health. Luxembourg and Poland, on the other hand, clearly opposed any new derogation. Italy, Croatia and the Czech Republic called for the “Public security” exception to be more clearly defined. The Czech minister stated, “We are pleased that the Commissioner repeated on several occasions that national security and defence, as well as data managed by the legal or police services will not be included in the proposal’s scope. Nonetheless, perhaps it is necessary to explicitly mention this”.
The Austrian, German and Portuguese ministers called for a better definition of nonpersonal data. Portugal emphasised that in cases involving mixed data, the general regulation on data protection (GRDP) should prevail.
It should be pointed out that the majority of member states welcome the fact that the proposal does not create a new law on the portability of computer cloud services. The proposal calls for the adoption of codes of conduct two years after it enters into force and details the data access conditions for market actors by way of free flow. (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)