Data Act agreement: The necessary balance is yet to be achieved

The European Commission, the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union have reached an agreement in the trilogue negotiations on the Data Act.

DIGITALEUROPE Director-General Cecilia Bonefeld-Dahl comments:

”Despite the improvements made throughout the negotiation process, the Data Act will place European industry at a disadvantage by forcing it to give up hard-earned data and restricting contractual freedom, potentially leading to a new wave of de-industrialization at a time of rising energy cost and tense economic prospects”

Despite our disappointment, we stand ready to collaborate and offer our expertise to mitigate the potential damage at a technical level.

We reiterate the urgent need to ensure that trade secrets, cybersecurity, health and safety are protected. It is imperative that thresholds for data holders to invoke these protections remain realistic, enabling companies to refuse access requests when they can demonstrate the risks posed to their trade secrets, cybersecurity and overall business operations.”

While the current agreement may not fully meet our expectations, we believe that by working together to co-create guidelines and model contracts and finetuning the text at the technical level, we can make progress toward a system that both opens the EU’s data economy and respects the legitimate aspirations of companies.