The Commission has now published the Data Act (and the Chips Act) for public consultation - Deadline is 9 May 2022.

This initiative, known as the ‘Data Act’, aims to facilitate access to and use of data, including business-to business and business-to-government, and to review the rules on the legal protection of databases. It seeks the right balance between rights to access data and incentives to invest in data, without changing the current data protection rules.

All interested in writing a response are welcome to join a MyData statement!

The EU Commission published the long-awaited Data Act on February 23, 2022. This is a progressive legislative proposal to increase access to data for the users of connected products suchs as Iot devices and related services. It is a significant move towards realising the MyData principle of portability, access, and re-use as well as the principle of interoperability. It will potentially also move the needle towards the shift from formal to actionable rights in terms of the right of data portability. With such a progressive agenda, the proposal will certainly also face significant opposition and counter-lobbying from those who stand to benefit from the status quo.

MyData Global is supportive of the Data Act proposal as a whole. And even in a good proposal, there is always room for some improvements, and here are our top picks to make the Data Act live up to its potential to create more human-centric, fair, sustainable, and prosperous digital societies for Europe and beyond

The value of the EU-27 data economy – firms with data processing as their core business model – will expand to 829 billion EUR by 2025, contributing to more than 5% of GDP. But data is playing an increasingly important role in almost every part of our economy. However, unlike other commodities, data is currently characterized by a low level of regulation.

The Data Act proposal defines the rules for sharing data, conditions for access by public bodies, international data transfers, cloud switching and interoperability, according to a leaked draft.

The Data Act is horizontal legislation for non-personal data that the European Commission plans to present on 23 February. The new rules will apply to the manufacturers of connected products, digital service providers and users in the EU.