The Swedish Presidency of the EU Council will send Member States a new compromise text on the data legislation (‘Data Act’) on 31 January (see EUROPE 13080/11).
The next version of the text will be based in particular on the position expressed by the Member States, questioned by the Swedish Presidency of the EU Council, on several aspects of the text, such as the exemptions for SMEs.
On this point, the Member States had to decide by 12 January on the three options put forward by the Council Presidency. The first option is to revert to the wording of the Commission’s proposal, which exempts micro and small enterprises. The second proposes to keep the compromise put forward by the previous Czech Presidency of the EU Council, which provides for the exemption to be extended to medium-sized companies that have had a product launched for less than a year and to those that have reached medium size for less than a year. The last option proposes to remove the exemption.
Member States also had to decide on the issue of the automatic cancellation of unfair contractual provisions imposed unilaterally on small and medium-sized enterprises. On this point, Member States had to decide whether or not to extend automatic cancellation in these situations regardless of the size of a company.
In addition, the next version of the compromise text will also include the comments made by Member States on the issue of trade secrecy. The current Presidency of the EU Council has asked them to propose options to try to strike a balance between the safeguards requested by some Member States to protect business and not undermining the objectives of the legislation. (Original version in French by Thomas Mangin)