On Thursday 25 March, the European Parliament adopted an own-initiative resolution proposing ways to increase data flows. This text, supported by a large majority of MEPs, follows the draft regulation presented last autumn by the Commission to unlock the value of data voluntarily made available for re-use (see EUROPE 12609/12).
“The key question is why, at present, data is not flowing across Europe. Your rapporteur believes that the answer lies in the lack of understanding, trust and interoperability”, posits Miapetra Kumpula-Natri (S&D, Finland), rapporteur, in her explanatory statement. In front of journalists, she answered that it is through “transparency and rules” that trust is created and called for the creation of a “European Schengen for the data economy”.
Voluntary or mandatory sharing?
The resolution encourages the Commission to promote a culture of data sharing and voluntary data sharing schemes, such as the implementation of best practices, fair contractual agreement models and security measures. It calls on the Commission to coordinate with Member States to facilitate the sharing of non-sensitive data sets generated by the public sector “beyond what is required by the Open Data Directive” [2019/1024, editor’s note], either free of charge, where possible, or at cost. In particular, it mentions the idea of extending the scope of the directive “to more public data sets”.
In addition, MEPs ask the Commission to define more precisely, for the purposes of data sharing between businesses and public administrations (B2G), under what circumstances and conditions, and for what incentives, the private sector should be obliged to share data with the public sector. They stress that mandatory B2G data sharing schemes, e.g. in cases of force majeure, should have a clearly defined scope and timeframe and be based on clear rules and obligations in order to avoid unfair competition.
Forthcoming calendar
For its part, the Commission has responded by indicating that it will adopt soon—perhaps as early as this summer—an implementing act on high-value datasets “so that more high-quality public sector data is available for re-use throughout the EU, free of charge, in machine-readable format and via application programme interfaces”. It will also propose, by the end of the year, a Data Act to improve fairness in the data economy by clarifying rights of use, particularly in data sharing between businesses (B2B) and between businesses and government (B2G). (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)