DOT Europe congratulates the co-legislators for reaching agreement in trilogues on the Data Act. Agreement brings us one step closer to clarifying data ownership rights, promoting more non-personal data sharing in Europe and creating of a more dynamic cloud services market.
It is very encouraging to see that co-legislators heeded concerns over undermining contractual freedom and took steps to mitigate this risk, allowing the offering of cloud services at more competitive prices through longer-term contracts.
We were also pleased to see incremental improvements on provisions surrounding international data transfers (article 27) and the clarification that this only applies to government data access requests. However, this article remains deeply problematic at its core and risks creating a system parallel to the GDPR for non-personal data; a result that is neither proportional nor justified. This approach threatens the smooth provision of services by operators active at a global scale.
“It is positive to see that co-legislators managed to clarify ambiguities on cloud services contracts, especially considering the frenetic pace of work imposed on them by intense political pressure to conclude negotiations”, said Siada El Ramly, Director General of DOT Europe. “Meanwhile, it is disappointing that the idea to use adequacy tools under the GDPR to transfer non-personal data has not been taken on board”, added El Ramly.
DOT Europe will continue working with policy makers to ensure successful implementation of the Data Act.
