In Strasbourg on Tuesday 14 March, the European Parliament adopted by an overwhelming majority the report by Pilar del Castillo Vera (EPP, Spanish) on the ‘Data Act’ (500 votes in favour, 23 against, 110 abstentions) (see EUROPE 13118/15) and thus adopted its position for future inter-institutional negotiations.
“The Data Regulation will be a complete game changer, allowing access to an almost infinite amount of high quality industrial data. Competitiveness and innovation are part of its DNA”, commented Ms del Castillo Vera after the vote.
As a reminder, the objective of the text adopted by the European Parliament is to allow users to have easier access to the data they generate, whereas the European Commission claims that 80% of the industrial data collected is never used.
On the business side, it allows companies to decide what data can and cannot be shared in relation to the design of a service. Some provisions are also included to protect trade secrets and to prevent facilitated access to data being used by competitors to design connected services or devices a posteriori.
The adopted text, which was debated at length by the European Parliament committee (see EUROPE 13080/11), also proposes to make it easier to change providers of ‘cloud’ computing services and other data processing services. It will also introduce safeguards against illegal international data transfers by cloud computing service providers.
“There is no ambiguity. For us, everything applies on our territory. We have reconnected the European information space to our physical space”, explained the Commissioner for the Internal Market, Thierry Breton.
While there was a broad consensus on the report, The Left group abstained, as it considered the text weak on the issue of privacy. “We will not vote in favour, because it doesn't go far enough for us”, its president, Manon Aubry (French), told EUROPE before the vote.
Inter-institutional negotiations can start once the EU Council has also adopted its position. A sixth compromise document on the ‘Data Act’ was submitted to the Member States on 8 March and was also discussed by the EU Council’s Working Party on Telecommunications on Tuesday 14 March. If an agreement is reached on this occasion, the text could then be submitted to the Committee of Permanent Representatives (Coreper) on 22 March. (Original version in French by Thomas Mangin)