The Data Governance Act - Overview

Data is at the heart of the digital transformation. Access to and use of personal data and non-personal data play an important role in all sectors of the economy, science and other areas that serve the common good (e.g. mobility transition, digitalisation, tackling the climate crisis).

The Data Governance Act (DGA) aims to create a legal framework for data sharing for the benefit of the European single market, ensuring neutral access to data and interoperability and helping to avoid lock-in effects (recital 2 DGA). The European Parliament adopted the DGA on 6 April 2022. As a Regulation, the DGA does not have to be transposed into national law by EU Member States; it entered into force 23 June 2022. It will be applicable after a transitional period of 15 months, i.e. From 24 September 2023.

Data Act and Data Governance Act: the pillars of the "European Data Strategy"

Together with the Data Act, the DGA (Regulation (EU) 2022/868 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 30 May 2022 on European data governance and amending Regulation (EU) 2018/1724 (also Data Governance Act)) is part of the EU Commission's "European Data Strategy" of 19 February 2020. This provides for the creation of common European data spaces in a single market for data for the legally compliant use of data from the EU and third countries, regardless of where it is stored. The German Federal Government's Digital Strategy presented on 31 August 2022 is also in line with this. The data spaces are intended to promote the development of future technologies such as the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and a secure data society and economy, and can be divided or interconnected on a sector-specific and topic-specific basis in areas such as health, mobility, energy, climate and environment, among others. A European Data Innovation Board will be established to facilitate this. 

The DGA as a means to achieve the objectives of the "European Data Strategy"

The EU's homepage regarding the "European Digital Strategy" specifies its objectives as the strengthening of mechanisms to increase data availability and trust in data exchange and overcoming technical obstacles to the re-use of data. The provisions of the DGA are also in line with these three objectives. The DGA focuses on data intermediation services and data altruism to achieve the objectives. Another important element is the re-use of certain categories of protected data held by public bodies.

Pillar 1 of the DGA: re-use of certain categories of protected data held by public sector bodies

The DGA aims to promote the re-use of public sector data beyond its original purpose by non-public sector bodies and contains rules on the re-use of certain categories of protected data to which public sector bodies have access. However, the DGA is not intended to create an obligation for public bodies to allow re-use of data. 

Pillar 2 of the DGA: data intermediation services as a "key role in the data economy"

Recital 27 DGA assumes that data intermediation services will play a "key role in the data economy" in promoting voluntary data sharing practices between companies and facilitating the exchange of substantial amounts of data and the use of data in the context of obligations under Union law or national law. Mechanisms to increase data availability through data intermediation services should therefore be strengthened. As an example of data intermediation services, the DGA mentions data marketplaces on which companies make data accessible to other companies. These services must go through a registration procedure and appoint a legal representative in the EU. Failure to comply with the requirements of the DGA can result in significant fines. 

The aim seems to be, among other things, to mitigate the influence of large tech companies, which results in particular from their ability to access the data collected due to their overwhelming market power. Data intermediation services are intended to help small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and start-ups gain access to and use of the data they need. The planned data spaces aim to support this and provide data that is needed for innovation, research and the like. 

Pillar 3 of the DGA: Data altruism - increasing the availability of data by voluntarily donating data

To be able to use data for the economy, research, innovation and environmental protection, in short: for the common good, the data has to be available in the first place. One way to achieve this is donating data, i.e. the voluntary provision of data – data altruism. In order to be recognised as a data altruistic organisation, entities must meet the requirements of the DGA (e.g. operate on a non-profit basis and be legally independent from entities that operate for profit; the structure must be functionally separate from its other activities) and go through the procedure for recognition. 

As already mentioned, strengthening trust in data exchange is one of the objectives of the DGA. In addition to notification procedures, monitoring procedures and transparency requirements, the Regulation provides for further trust-building mechanisms to promote the exchange of data. Interoperability obligations aim to eliminate technical obstacles that could stand in the way of data use. 

The "European Data Strategy": data use and trust

Data use is to be brought into line with data protection, cyber security and the protection of intellectual property. The DGA ensures that the provisions of the GDPR and competition law remain unaffected. In accordance with the "FAIR data principles", the data spaces must ensure that data is findable, accessible, interoperable and re-usable. 

All this is intended, among other things, to make data intermediation services a safe and secure environment for the exchange of data, protected from misuse. Time will tell how this will take shape in the future with the Data Act and the DGA. In addition, it is important not only to make data available, but also to guarantee the quality of the data and ensure a standard of the data held in the data spaces so that the digital transformation is successful. The success of the projects and innovation serving the general public in various sectors that are to be furthered with the use of data depends to a large extent on high data quality. It remains to be seen whether the somewhat unwieldy DGA can sufficiently motivate people to share and use data and ensure its quality. For companies that use or want to use data, the Data Act and the DGA should be incentive enough to familiarise themselves with the regulations and the European Data Strategy.

Click here for an overview of the Data Act, which is also part of the "European Data Strategy": Proposal for EU Data Act adopted – Commission Aims at Boosting Europe's Data Economy with new legal rules for data access and sharing (cms-lawnow.com).