On Tuesday 8 November, the EU Member States will work on the Czech Presidency’s new compromise proposal for future data legislation (‘Data Act’) at a meeting of the Council of the EU’s Working Party on Telecommunications (see EUROPE 13051/11).
Several changes have been made in comparison with previous versions. For example, the Czech Presidency of the Council of the EU is proposing that customers should be required to give 2 months’ notice of termination of a contract with a cloud computing provider. This notice period was previously set at 30 days.
In addition, when switching from one cloud provider to another, customers could extend the transition period and make this decision effective at a time that seems most appropriate to them. The initial period was again set at 30 days.
On the side of cloud service providers, the Czech Presidency of the Council of the EU proposes that the types of data specific to the internal functioning of their services be specified. This data would be excluded when ported to another provider.
The issue of switching cloud computing data processing providers is also one of the aspects of the text under debate in the European Parliament (see EUROPE 13052/15).
In addition, the text also returns to the issue of international data transfers. In this respect, the text clarifies that cloud service providers would not have to comply with requests for access to data issued by a court in a third country if there is no judicial cooperation agreement between that court and the EU.
In this respect, companies providing cloud services could consult their national authorities on legal issues related to international cooperation.
In addition, the latest version of the compromise document specifies that cloud service providers would have 30 days to delete the migrated customer’s data after transferring to another provider. (Original version in French by Thomas Mangin)