At the Telecommunications Council on Tuesday 3 December, European Commissioner for the Internal Market, Thierry Breton, detailed the highlights of the next European Data Strategy, which was added to his portfolio a few days ago (see EUROPE 12381/2).
"Europe has a real lead in industrial matters compared to its competitors. We still need to build the infrastructure to use this data, share it by sector, and take advantage of this opportunity", said the new Commissioner, who is also responsible for the Digital Transition.
Details of the projects
As internal documents from the Commission services suggested, the new team intends to present a European Data Strategy (see EUROPE 12352/7). In particular, the creation of a common European data space. "In 2020, I will propose measures to organise this data space, with an emphasis on data interoperability and reuse", Thierry Breton told Telecommunications Ministers. And further: "In the agenda I will be proposing to you in 2021: to identify a series of high quality data that will be available free of charge via programming interfaces (APIs) and in machine-readable formats".
The French Commissioner has placed great emphasis on industrial data and related security aspects: according to him, in 2019, 80% of the data produced by human activity is processed and stored in data centres or in cloud infrastructures and 20% is stored in a distributed way. However, the trend is expected to reverse within 5 years, i.e. by the end of the Commissioner's mandate.
Member States' warnings
Overall, Member States supported the new Commissioner's vision. However, many delegations cautioned against desires for regulation. "It will be necessary to identify which data should be shared voluntarily and which should be mandatory", Slovakia summarised, in a context where "some players are reluctant to share their data".
Delegations were invited to answer three questions from the Presidency on actions to stimulate the European data economy, measures to encourage data sharing between companies in Europe over the next 5 years and safeguards to be introduced for intelligent and autonomous algorithms and systems (see EUROPE 12381/9).
"We might envisage pursuing self-regulatory initiatives in the medium term (such as business-to-business information sharing platforms). Alternatively, we might consider other obligations for sectors with a high level of public interest, such as health or the low-carbon economy", said the Bulgarian delegation. The Netherlands suggested allowing industry "1 year" to organize itself on business-to-business data sharing solutions. France also advocated a phased approach in the field: "We could first tackle data of general interest and target large operators with large amounts of data", said the Deputy Ambassador, highlighting the potential of "labels, standard contracts, portability, interoperability, etc." During their intervention, Luxembourg and Portugal supported the regulatory 'sandbox' tool, which allows players to test their technology without necessarily having to comply with the entire regulatory framework that would normally apply.
A permanent ethics council
With regard to concrete ideas, Lithuania suggested the creation of a permanent council on data ethics and artificial intelligence to ensure that algorithms respect privacy. The United Kingdom, which participated in the meeting on an exceptional basis despite Brexit, proposed the creation of a "taxonomy of data categories". Finally, Germany and Belgium suggested building on what had been done in the second Payment Services Directive to identify sectors where there is no responsible sharing of data. (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)