On Friday 6 October, the EU’s Committee of Permanent Representatives (Coreper) adopted its position for future negotiations with the European Parliament on ‘Interoperable Europe’ legislation (see EUROPE 13067/12). The first round of inter-institutional negotiations (‘trilogue’) will take place on 10 October.
In concrete terms, the EU Council has taken on board a number of elements proposed by the European Commission in order to achieve the stated objective of creating a network of interconnected digital public administrations to facilitate the secure cross-border exchange of data and accelerate the digital transformation of the European public sector through measures to support innovation and strengthen the exchange of skills and knowledge.
The EU Council’s approach prior to this first trilogue is based on rules designed to guarantee “structured cooperation at EU level”, where public administrations, supported by players from the public and private sectors, will be able to join forces in projects run jointly by Member States, regions or cities.
A one-stop shop for sharing and re-using interoperability solutions will be set up, as will the ‘Interoperability Council’, which will be responsible for defining common resources that can be re-used. While this point was part of the Commission’s initial proposal, the EU Council is proposing to strengthen the role of the future ‘interoperable Europe portal’.
A number of changes have also been made to the scope of the directive, clarifying the objectives and conditions of the mandatory interoperability assessment with a view to respecting the principles of proportionality and subsidiarity.
The EU Council has also revised its position to bring the text into line with the provisions on ‘regulatory sandboxes’ in the future legislation on artificial intelligence (‘AI Act’), on which inter-institutional negotiations are still underway (see EUROPE 13265/9), as well as on several other aspects relating to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). (Original version in French by Thomas Mangin)