EU Member States submitted to the Swedish Presidency of the EU Council, on Friday 3 February, their remarks on their respective outstanding priorities for the future ‘Data Act’ (see EUROPE 13106/33). These remarks come after the EU Council Presidency finalised a fourth compromise proposal on 25 January.
As a reminder, the text returned in particular to the issue of trade secrets and specified that it should be up to the users or third parties concerned to take “technical and organisational” measures to protect the data when the originating organisation identifies that the data contains trade secrets (see EUROPE 13108/7).
A number of other changes had been introduced and the latest version of the text included a provision to prevent data sharing with third parties in connection with the development of competing products.
In addition, several changes had also occurred with regard to the scope. In line with the latest discussions, the Swedish Presidency of the Council of the EU had clarified which data falls within the scope of the Regulation by focusing on the functionalities of the data collected by the sensors embedded in the connected products, rather than on the products themselves.
The Swedish Presidency had also revised the part of the text dealing with micro-enterprises and SMEs. The text had been amended to require microenterprises and SMEs to provide data to the public sector only in cases of emergency. Several provisions had also been introduced to avoid as much as possible an excessive burden on these micro-enterprises and SMEs, by specifying the possibility for them to claim compensation.
A number of clarifications were also made on the relationship between the future data legislation and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Thus the fourth version of the text provided for notification to the independent supervisory authority responsible for the application of the GDPR in the event of a request for personal data.
See the document: https://aeur.eu/f/58v (Original version in French by Thomas Mangin)