The Data Act has been in force since Friday. It aims to facilitate the use of data and promote innovation. Industry associations see opportunities, but criticize uncertainties.
By Corinna Visser
The EU's latest data law, the Data Act, is primarily intended to create value from unused data volumes. Companies, users and the public are set to benefit. All news on the EU Data Act from the Europe.table editorial team What is the Data Act? With the help of the Data Act, the European Union wants to make greater use of industrial data. The EU plans to promote data-driven innovation and focus more on data as a commodity. This is based on the fact that, according to the EU Commission, a large proportion of industrial data remains unused. The Data Act strengthens the principles of value creation, fairness and competition on the data market within the European Union. The new data law is intended to pave the way for the legal, economic and technological use of this data. The EU intends to exploit the potential of digitalization and create a legal framework with the Data Act. Aspects of data security and data protection are also included in the Data Act. What does the Data Act contain? Not only industry and research should be able to benefit from the EU Data Act: The Data Act also includes measures that make it easier for users to access networked data and at the same time enable its further processing. The Data Act therefore strengthens the data rights of the people who generated the data. At the same time, the new Data Act places greater obligations on data market providers. For example, GDPR-like standards are to apply with regard to information about users' rights. According to the EU Commission, both users and companies should benefit from easier access to data. This is because data-driven service providers can use the newly acquired industry data to drive innovation. The Data Act also strengthens data services (data-driven service providers) by increasing the possibility of personalizing services. Data services will therefore also benefit from the Act. What will change with the Data Act? According to the EU Data Act, users will be able to switch between different cloud providers in future. This places higher demands on interoperability and common standards among service providers. However, data transfer is to be subject to strict monitoring and data security (Data Security of the Act) is to become a priority. The EU Commission is also taking aspects of data protection and cyber security into account in the Data Act. The EU Commission also wants to implement greater fairness when concluding contracts for data processing. Data license agreements are to be more strictly regulated in future and unfair contractual clauses are to be prohibited. Who should be able to access the data? Data generated by private platforms should be available to the public sector in order to be able to intervene more quickly in public crises such as flood disasters. Access rights should be made easier in future in the event of special requirements, such as those imposed on the data market by the Covid pandemic. The Data Act does not meet demands that this should not only be possible retrospectively, but that public bodies should be part of a non-profit data market as a matter of principle. What is the difference between the Data Governance Act and the Data Act? The EU Data Act follows the Data Governance Act of 2020. Both data laws are part of the EU data strategy and are intended to strengthen the data economy. The Data Governance Act is aimed more at processes and structures that regulate the exchange of data. The Data Act, on the other hand, focuses on the value of data use and the conditions for this. Unlike the Data Act, the Data Governance Act has already been provisionally adopted by the EU Parliament. Who does the Data Act apply to? In principle, the Data Act applies to all players in the data economy. This includes all companies across all sectors that are part of the data market. In other words: process and exchange data. The EU Data Act therefore applies to both the private and public sectors. However, the ban on unfair contractual clauses primarily benefits smaller or medium-sized companies. These have so far been largely squeezed out of the data market by technology giants (so-called gatekeepers). So far, fines of up to 20,EUR 000,000 or 4% of global annual turnover have been envisaged. What criticism has been leveled at the Data Act? Digital experts criticize the fact that the Data Act does not clarify the question of data ownership. It remains unclear who has the ultimate rights to the intangible asset. In addition, the prohibition of unfair contractual clauses restricts contractual freedom to some extent. Experts also criticize the legal uncertainties regarding data protection and the security of the Data Act. The digital platform netzpolitik.org sees the Data Act primarily as an economic project whose social benefits are overemphasized. It believes that the Data Act's charitable potential has not been fully exploited. At the same time, it praises the fact that the EU is addressing the challenges of digitalization with digital laws, including the Data Governance Act, especially in times of crisis and anti-democratic developments. Whether the Data Act will actually be adopted by the EU Parliament and the member states will probably be decided in 2023. The Table.media editorial team provides summaries and analyses of the developments that will follow and how they should be classified.
