German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier reacted with disappointment to Ukraine’s announcement that his visit was “not welcome”. Germany’s leadership role in the EU thus remains on shaky ground. The German government also tends to be a blocker for tougher sanctions against Russia.
In the event of a gas supply stop on the Russian side, European cooperation would have to prove itself all over again. But the Union needs time to create the right structures, as you can read in Manuel Berkel’s Feature. Also included: the German Ministry for Economic Affairs new plans to secure critical gas infrastructure.
The German Federal Cartel Office is now taking a closer look at refinery operators and wholesalers due to the high fuel prices. The authority has launched a sector inquiry to shed light on the exact reasons for the price developments.
Once again, the EU Commission has postponed the presentation of the draft regulation on the European Health Data Space (EHDS). Many stakeholders are finding it difficult to get a clear understanding of the complex structure. Experts from Joint Action TEHDAS explore the individual issues and show how the architecture and infrastructure of the EHDS could look in detail. Eugenie Ankowitsch has highlighted the most important findings from the latest publications.
Ulrich Kelber, Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information, is often perceived as a road block. However, he sees himself more as a speed bump, that is, one who keeps things from rolling away inexorably and causing damage, as you can read in today’s Profile.
Europe continues to work hard to prepare for a possible end to Russian gas supplies and is certainly seeing success – for example, in imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG). In the first quarter, the EU imported 13 billion cubic meters (bcm) more LNG than in the same period last year, as Bruegel analyst Ben McWilliams wrote on Twitter on Tuesday. “This is on the EU Commission’s target path of 50 bcm of additional LNG within this year.” Higher utilization was seen primarily at terminals in the Netherlands, France, and Belgium, according to Bruegel.
Bruegel colleague Georg Zachmann therefore now sees a possible total loss of Russian supplies not primarily as a technical problem, but more as a challenge for European cooperation. The question is whether the internal market and the solidarity among the member states will hold up, Zachmann said during a discussion with the Florence School of Regulation. The discussion focused on two levels: joint procurement of gas and distribution of the fuel.
In terms of procurement, member states are currently still forging ahead individually. Italy, for example, announced an agreement with Algeria on Monday evening that provides for additional annual gas supplies of 9 bcm from 2023/24. For coordinated procurement, the EU Commission has set up a new gas platform, which met for the first time last Thursday.
But joint gas purchases would only make sense to refill storage facilities by next winter, said former Commission official Klaus-Dieter Borchardt, who now works as a consultant for the major law firm Baker McKenzie. Joint procurement could even lead to new delays, believes Walter Boltz, a former board member at Austrian regulator E-Control. However, a joint framework agreement for smaller member states could make sense to gather the necessary volumes for long-term LNG supplies.
However, Borchardt does not see the EU prepared for a halt to Russian gas supplies within a few weeks. It would be impossible to create the appropriate institutions so quickly, the former Commission official said. In his view, a renunciation of Russian gas supplies would only be possible in the next decade.
Germany also needs time to become independent of Russian gas, according to the Federal Network Agency. “Four years of tight regimentation – genuinely ambitious – then it can succeed,” said Klaus Müller, head of the authority, in an interview with “Die Zeit”. One prerequisite was a reduction in consumption. Müller even advocated thinking about cuts for household customers. In a gas emergency, for example, the operation of saunas or the heating of large single apartments “can no longer be justified under any circumstances”.
For the distribution of gas supplies to individual EU countries in the event of an emergency, Borchardt does not believe in a solution via intergovernmental agreements. Coordination could take place, on the one hand, via the Commission and, on the other, via the emergency supply corridors provided for in the European SoS Regulation.
Meanwhile, Germany is making preparations for possible energy company defaults. The Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs wants to reserve the right to expropriate energy companies as a last resort in the event of a crisis. According to information from the Ministry for Economic Affairs on Tuesday, the Energy Security Act, which dates back to 1975, is to be modernized and supplemented due to the distortions on the energy markets in the wake of the war in Ukraine. The corresponding draft went to the departmental vote.
Accordingly, special measures should be possible even before an immediate threat to or disruption of the energy supply. Groups that are considered to be part of the critical energy infrastructure could then be placed under trusteeship if necessary. This would take effect if the companies were no longer able to fulfill their duties and security of supply was at risk.
Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) had already chosen this model most recently for the subsidiary of a foreign company – Gazprom Germania, the German business of the Russian gas group. The subsidiary was placed under the trusteeship of the Federal Network Agency, which now holds all voting rights from shares in Gazprom Germania until September 30. The trusteeship is to be structured in the Energy Security Act in such a way that it is independent of requirements under foreign trade law. with rtr
On April 6, the EU Commission had planned to present its proposed regulation on the European Health Data Space (EHDS). But now, the publication has been postponed again. The reasons for this can only be speculated. It is rumored that the financing of the project, which is estimated at €663 million in the leaked preliminary draft, has not been sufficiently clarified. There is also criticism of encroachments on the competencies of the member states. Other sources explain the postponement by the fact that the chapter on technical infrastructure was not yet fully developed. As usual, there are no official statements from the Commission on the renewed postponement.
The Joint Action Towards the European Health Data Space (TEHDAS) has now presented two reports on the technical and administrative infrastructure. Twenty-one EU member states are involved in TEHDAS, which aims to support the EU Commission in its legislative proposal for the European Health Data Space for the secondary use of health data. The Finnish innovation fund Sitra leads the Joint Action.
In one of these reports, in which TEHDAS examined health data access processes in different countries, the authors conclude that the diversity of health data management approaches in EU member states hinders data use. In this regard, the experts highlight the different approaches to managing and accessing health data, which they say are due to countries’ legal and political frameworks.
For example, Findata and the Health Data Hub (HDH) have been established in Finland and France as national hubs that aim to integrate data access requests and permissioning into a centralized system. For example, Findata, established in 2019, has the authority to grant secondary use permits for all Finnish health and social data collected in primary care and for national registries. The authority receives and processes the data and makes it available for analysis in a secure environment. A similar one-stop shop system is planned in Germany with the Research Data Center Health, which is currently being established and plans to process its first applications in the fall.
On the other hand, in the Netherlands and Spain, there are several bodies involved in data access and licensing under a decentralized system. The Spanish BIGAN platform, for example, is managed by the Instituto Aragonés de Ciencias de la Salud (IACS). It consists of three different portals that offer different services depending on their purpose.
Unlike many other government-organized data providers, the Dutch foundation Health-RI is a public-private partnership of organizations involved in health research. Health-RI focuses on building an integrated health data research infrastructure that is accessible to researchers, citizens, and providers to enable optimal use of health data. The institution is neither a data licensing authority nor a data owner. Health-RI is a network that provides tools and standards to support the reuse of health data. In addition, the Netherlands has the Central Bureau for Statistics (CBS, Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek), which mainly aggregates data from public sources, including hospital discharge registers, primary care databases, causes of death, medical profession registers, health surveys, and patient records.
Different health data access systems may have varying degrees of centralization at multiple levels, TEHDAS experts emphasized, including:
Although actual use cases may vary widely, typical centralized systems use all of the above levels, the authors point out. This would simplify data access.
Conversely, decentralized systems typically give local stakeholders control over several of these layers, the authors said. In the absence of a single, centralized platform, databases are typically scattered across multiple local data holders. Users are expected to provide a secure space for collecting and analyzing the data needed for their project. Decentralized systems also often require that the request for data approval be made to each individual data holder, each based on their own criteria.
And so, the authors of the TEHDAS report advocate for the establishment of a single contact point per member state with centralized responsibility for accessing health data and processing applications.
Despite the different systems in Finland, France, Spain, and the Netherlands, the process of verifying and granting access is quite similar. The experts, therefore, propose a universal procedure for requesting health data. Accordingly, this comprises the following steps: contacting and identifying data, requesting and reviewing data authorization, reviewing the data request, granting data authorization and data use agreement, and providing and using data.
Certain technical services are required for each of these steps. In another report, TEHDAS has now provided an initial definition of services that are required as a minimum for the various phases of data access – from identification to requesting authorization to use.
As a result of many discussions, the TEHDAS experts initially advocate an EHDS architecture based on a peer-to-peer (P2P) network. Here, each node stores its part of the data. This system contrasts with a client-server scenario, in which all information is stored in a single node, the server, and the other nodes, the clients, access this node. In a P2P network, each node could operate in isolation and provide a certain number of services to the community of its users, such as accessing and analyzing the data available in the node.
The “Users’ Journey”, as a description of the typical steps a data user goes through served as a guide for TEHDAS experts to define the technical EHDS infrastructure in terms of service options.
The data discovery phase is the starting point of the entire User’s Journey process. In this phase, the data user searches for the data he needs to carry out a specific project. A prerequisite for conducting this search is that the available data has been properly prepared and published in metadata catalogs, the report states.
Finally, in the data usage phase, the data user performs the data analyses. Data integration services would be needed in this process. According to the report, they should include all software elements that enable a harmonized view of the data, including querying the requested data and linking it to other data sources. In addition, data provision services and data analysis services are essential in the view of TEHDAS experts.
The project closure phase is the final phase in which the data user must ensure proper disclosure of its results to the other EHDS users, adhering to the FAIR principles for results data. In addition, services would be required for archiving and validating results, as well as services to prepare for results output.
The Commission’s next attempt at the European Health Data Space legislative proposal is scheduled for May 3.
Ulrich Kelber can be very quick. If you ask him whether it’s frustrating that the data protection officer is perceived as a blocker, he changes the narrative focus from the idea of a hard blocker to that of a so-called drag shoe before you can finish asking. Kelber explains that railroads use drag shoes to keep trains from rolling away. “To prevent accidents, to put it bluntly. To keep things where they belong.” And that’s a bit of his job description, too.
Ulrich Kelber, born in 1968, has been the Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information since January 2019. In the 1990s, Kelber, who has a degree in computer science, was a consultant for an IT company. From 2000, he sat in the Bundestag for the SPD for 18 years and won his direct mandate even when the Social Democrats were weakening, and most residents in his constituency of Bonn preferred to give their second vote to the CDU.
“The very worst thing is if we’re right“
Kelber would be happy, he says, to be involved more often and earlier in the legislative process so things could be done differently. “In many places, that’s possible.” He is annoyed that he often receives draft legislation just before cabinet meetings and has no time to incorporate his comments. Sometimes he still has time to warn that something might be unconstitutional or contrary to European law. “The very worst thing is when we are right, and then three or four years later, a digitization project is stopped by the Constitutional Court or the Federal Supreme Court. Then a lot of time and millions of euros have been wasted, even though there would have been alternatives.”
In other places, the path to the goal must be considered. “If we strengthen pseudonymization and anonymization technologies, more data processing of personal data is possible. If we promoted decentralized AI, federated AI, distributed learning, AI would not only be possible but even possible with data that you cannot achieve at all with centralized data collection methods, i.e., the famous data lakes. That would be the European way.” Kelber sees himself as a protector of citizens’ freedoms: “In other areas, some have confused spying and digitizing with each other. And we don’t accept that.”
“Interventions by the state must be proportionate”
Kelber believes that the responsibility for establishing a legally secure basis for transatlantic data transfer lies first and foremost with the Americans. He would prefer a regulation that would enable a free flow of data between all democratically governed countries. “For this to happen, however, there must be no second-class rights for European citizens; state intervention must be proportionate, and there must be rights to defend oneself.”
In his private life, Kelber does not use Whatsapp, Instagram, Tiktok, or Android. He uses Twitter intensively and has already been criticized for it. His five children can do as they please, but they are no longer allowed to synchronize with all their devices. He spends his free time with the Bonn Capitals baseball team as a “very active fan”. There, he is not a drag, but rather a draught horse – with a cowbell on the sidelines. Gabriel Bub
German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier reacted with disappointment to Ukraine’s announcement that his visit was “not welcome”. Germany’s leadership role in the EU thus remains on shaky ground. The German government also tends to be a blocker for tougher sanctions against Russia.
In the event of a gas supply stop on the Russian side, European cooperation would have to prove itself all over again. But the Union needs time to create the right structures, as you can read in Manuel Berkel’s Feature. Also included: the German Ministry for Economic Affairs new plans to secure critical gas infrastructure.
The German Federal Cartel Office is now taking a closer look at refinery operators and wholesalers due to the high fuel prices. The authority has launched a sector inquiry to shed light on the exact reasons for the price developments.
Once again, the EU Commission has postponed the presentation of the draft regulation on the European Health Data Space (EHDS). Many stakeholders are finding it difficult to get a clear understanding of the complex structure. Experts from Joint Action TEHDAS explore the individual issues and show how the architecture and infrastructure of the EHDS could look in detail. Eugenie Ankowitsch has highlighted the most important findings from the latest publications.
Ulrich Kelber, Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information, is often perceived as a road block. However, he sees himself more as a speed bump, that is, one who keeps things from rolling away inexorably and causing damage, as you can read in today’s Profile.
Europe continues to work hard to prepare for a possible end to Russian gas supplies and is certainly seeing success – for example, in imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG). In the first quarter, the EU imported 13 billion cubic meters (bcm) more LNG than in the same period last year, as Bruegel analyst Ben McWilliams wrote on Twitter on Tuesday. “This is on the EU Commission’s target path of 50 bcm of additional LNG within this year.” Higher utilization was seen primarily at terminals in the Netherlands, France, and Belgium, according to Bruegel.
Bruegel colleague Georg Zachmann therefore now sees a possible total loss of Russian supplies not primarily as a technical problem, but more as a challenge for European cooperation. The question is whether the internal market and the solidarity among the member states will hold up, Zachmann said during a discussion with the Florence School of Regulation. The discussion focused on two levels: joint procurement of gas and distribution of the fuel.
In terms of procurement, member states are currently still forging ahead individually. Italy, for example, announced an agreement with Algeria on Monday evening that provides for additional annual gas supplies of 9 bcm from 2023/24. For coordinated procurement, the EU Commission has set up a new gas platform, which met for the first time last Thursday.
But joint gas purchases would only make sense to refill storage facilities by next winter, said former Commission official Klaus-Dieter Borchardt, who now works as a consultant for the major law firm Baker McKenzie. Joint procurement could even lead to new delays, believes Walter Boltz, a former board member at Austrian regulator E-Control. However, a joint framework agreement for smaller member states could make sense to gather the necessary volumes for long-term LNG supplies.
However, Borchardt does not see the EU prepared for a halt to Russian gas supplies within a few weeks. It would be impossible to create the appropriate institutions so quickly, the former Commission official said. In his view, a renunciation of Russian gas supplies would only be possible in the next decade.
Germany also needs time to become independent of Russian gas, according to the Federal Network Agency. “Four years of tight regimentation – genuinely ambitious – then it can succeed,” said Klaus Müller, head of the authority, in an interview with “Die Zeit”. One prerequisite was a reduction in consumption. Müller even advocated thinking about cuts for household customers. In a gas emergency, for example, the operation of saunas or the heating of large single apartments “can no longer be justified under any circumstances”.
For the distribution of gas supplies to individual EU countries in the event of an emergency, Borchardt does not believe in a solution via intergovernmental agreements. Coordination could take place, on the one hand, via the Commission and, on the other, via the emergency supply corridors provided for in the European SoS Regulation.
Meanwhile, Germany is making preparations for possible energy company defaults. The Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs wants to reserve the right to expropriate energy companies as a last resort in the event of a crisis. According to information from the Ministry for Economic Affairs on Tuesday, the Energy Security Act, which dates back to 1975, is to be modernized and supplemented due to the distortions on the energy markets in the wake of the war in Ukraine. The corresponding draft went to the departmental vote.
Accordingly, special measures should be possible even before an immediate threat to or disruption of the energy supply. Groups that are considered to be part of the critical energy infrastructure could then be placed under trusteeship if necessary. This would take effect if the companies were no longer able to fulfill their duties and security of supply was at risk.
Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) had already chosen this model most recently for the subsidiary of a foreign company – Gazprom Germania, the German business of the Russian gas group. The subsidiary was placed under the trusteeship of the Federal Network Agency, which now holds all voting rights from shares in Gazprom Germania until September 30. The trusteeship is to be structured in the Energy Security Act in such a way that it is independent of requirements under foreign trade law. with rtr
On April 6, the EU Commission had planned to present its proposed regulation on the European Health Data Space (EHDS). But now, the publication has been postponed again. The reasons for this can only be speculated. It is rumored that the financing of the project, which is estimated at €663 million in the leaked preliminary draft, has not been sufficiently clarified. There is also criticism of encroachments on the competencies of the member states. Other sources explain the postponement by the fact that the chapter on technical infrastructure was not yet fully developed. As usual, there are no official statements from the Commission on the renewed postponement.
The Joint Action Towards the European Health Data Space (TEHDAS) has now presented two reports on the technical and administrative infrastructure. Twenty-one EU member states are involved in TEHDAS, which aims to support the EU Commission in its legislative proposal for the European Health Data Space for the secondary use of health data. The Finnish innovation fund Sitra leads the Joint Action.
In one of these reports, in which TEHDAS examined health data access processes in different countries, the authors conclude that the diversity of health data management approaches in EU member states hinders data use. In this regard, the experts highlight the different approaches to managing and accessing health data, which they say are due to countries’ legal and political frameworks.
For example, Findata and the Health Data Hub (HDH) have been established in Finland and France as national hubs that aim to integrate data access requests and permissioning into a centralized system. For example, Findata, established in 2019, has the authority to grant secondary use permits for all Finnish health and social data collected in primary care and for national registries. The authority receives and processes the data and makes it available for analysis in a secure environment. A similar one-stop shop system is planned in Germany with the Research Data Center Health, which is currently being established and plans to process its first applications in the fall.
On the other hand, in the Netherlands and Spain, there are several bodies involved in data access and licensing under a decentralized system. The Spanish BIGAN platform, for example, is managed by the Instituto Aragonés de Ciencias de la Salud (IACS). It consists of three different portals that offer different services depending on their purpose.
Unlike many other government-organized data providers, the Dutch foundation Health-RI is a public-private partnership of organizations involved in health research. Health-RI focuses on building an integrated health data research infrastructure that is accessible to researchers, citizens, and providers to enable optimal use of health data. The institution is neither a data licensing authority nor a data owner. Health-RI is a network that provides tools and standards to support the reuse of health data. In addition, the Netherlands has the Central Bureau for Statistics (CBS, Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek), which mainly aggregates data from public sources, including hospital discharge registers, primary care databases, causes of death, medical profession registers, health surveys, and patient records.
Different health data access systems may have varying degrees of centralization at multiple levels, TEHDAS experts emphasized, including:
Although actual use cases may vary widely, typical centralized systems use all of the above levels, the authors point out. This would simplify data access.
Conversely, decentralized systems typically give local stakeholders control over several of these layers, the authors said. In the absence of a single, centralized platform, databases are typically scattered across multiple local data holders. Users are expected to provide a secure space for collecting and analyzing the data needed for their project. Decentralized systems also often require that the request for data approval be made to each individual data holder, each based on their own criteria.
And so, the authors of the TEHDAS report advocate for the establishment of a single contact point per member state with centralized responsibility for accessing health data and processing applications.
Despite the different systems in Finland, France, Spain, and the Netherlands, the process of verifying and granting access is quite similar. The experts, therefore, propose a universal procedure for requesting health data. Accordingly, this comprises the following steps: contacting and identifying data, requesting and reviewing data authorization, reviewing the data request, granting data authorization and data use agreement, and providing and using data.
Certain technical services are required for each of these steps. In another report, TEHDAS has now provided an initial definition of services that are required as a minimum for the various phases of data access – from identification to requesting authorization to use.
As a result of many discussions, the TEHDAS experts initially advocate an EHDS architecture based on a peer-to-peer (P2P) network. Here, each node stores its part of the data. This system contrasts with a client-server scenario, in which all information is stored in a single node, the server, and the other nodes, the clients, access this node. In a P2P network, each node could operate in isolation and provide a certain number of services to the community of its users, such as accessing and analyzing the data available in the node.
The “Users’ Journey”, as a description of the typical steps a data user goes through served as a guide for TEHDAS experts to define the technical EHDS infrastructure in terms of service options.
The data discovery phase is the starting point of the entire User’s Journey process. In this phase, the data user searches for the data he needs to carry out a specific project. A prerequisite for conducting this search is that the available data has been properly prepared and published in metadata catalogs, the report states.
Finally, in the data usage phase, the data user performs the data analyses. Data integration services would be needed in this process. According to the report, they should include all software elements that enable a harmonized view of the data, including querying the requested data and linking it to other data sources. In addition, data provision services and data analysis services are essential in the view of TEHDAS experts.
The project closure phase is the final phase in which the data user must ensure proper disclosure of its results to the other EHDS users, adhering to the FAIR principles for results data. In addition, services would be required for archiving and validating results, as well as services to prepare for results output.
The Commission’s next attempt at the European Health Data Space legislative proposal is scheduled for May 3.
Ulrich Kelber can be very quick. If you ask him whether it’s frustrating that the data protection officer is perceived as a blocker, he changes the narrative focus from the idea of a hard blocker to that of a so-called drag shoe before you can finish asking. Kelber explains that railroads use drag shoes to keep trains from rolling away. “To prevent accidents, to put it bluntly. To keep things where they belong.” And that’s a bit of his job description, too.
Ulrich Kelber, born in 1968, has been the Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information since January 2019. In the 1990s, Kelber, who has a degree in computer science, was a consultant for an IT company. From 2000, he sat in the Bundestag for the SPD for 18 years and won his direct mandate even when the Social Democrats were weakening, and most residents in his constituency of Bonn preferred to give their second vote to the CDU.
“The very worst thing is if we’re right“
Kelber would be happy, he says, to be involved more often and earlier in the legislative process so things could be done differently. “In many places, that’s possible.” He is annoyed that he often receives draft legislation just before cabinet meetings and has no time to incorporate his comments. Sometimes he still has time to warn that something might be unconstitutional or contrary to European law. “The very worst thing is when we are right, and then three or four years later, a digitization project is stopped by the Constitutional Court or the Federal Supreme Court. Then a lot of time and millions of euros have been wasted, even though there would have been alternatives.”
In other places, the path to the goal must be considered. “If we strengthen pseudonymization and anonymization technologies, more data processing of personal data is possible. If we promoted decentralized AI, federated AI, distributed learning, AI would not only be possible but even possible with data that you cannot achieve at all with centralized data collection methods, i.e., the famous data lakes. That would be the European way.” Kelber sees himself as a protector of citizens’ freedoms: “In other areas, some have confused spying and digitizing with each other. And we don’t accept that.”
“Interventions by the state must be proportionate”
Kelber believes that the responsibility for establishing a legally secure basis for transatlantic data transfer lies first and foremost with the Americans. He would prefer a regulation that would enable a free flow of data between all democratically governed countries. “For this to happen, however, there must be no second-class rights for European citizens; state intervention must be proportionate, and there must be rights to defend oneself.”
In his private life, Kelber does not use Whatsapp, Instagram, Tiktok, or Android. He uses Twitter intensively and has already been criticized for it. His five children can do as they please, but they are no longer allowed to synchronize with all their devices. He spends his free time with the Bonn Capitals baseball team as a “very active fan”. There, he is not a drag, but rather a draught horse – with a cowbell on the sidelines. Gabriel Bub
