REGULATION OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL ON EUROPEAN DATA MANAGEMENT (DRAFT 2020.11.25)

[Data Governance Act, DGA]

Summary

The DGA aims to ensure free data-sharing to develop the EU digital policy. In particular, the DGA aims to increase the availability of data for further use, including by increasing trust in data intermediaries and strengthening data sharing mechanisms across the European Union.

Impact

One of the areas of regulation under the DGA includes, among other things, the terms and conditions according to which the data held by public sector bodies that fall outside the scope of Directive 2019/1024 on open data and re-use of public sector information may be re-used, excluding the data that are covered by trade secret or statistical confidentiality and data to which third parties hold ownership titles.

Furthermore, the DGA governs the process of sharing personal and non-personal data between businesses as well as between consumers and businesses. To this end, the DGA creates a category of data sharing service providers and requires them to report to the competent authority and meet a number of requirements, in particular to remain neutral with respect to the data shared.

The DGA also establishes the concept of voluntary sharing of data by individuals or businesses for the common good (i.e. altruistic approach to data). In this regard, the organizations with an altruistic approach to data are to be registered as the “EU-recognized organizations with an altruistic approach to data”.