Bitkom comments on the EU‘s data governance proposal
The European Commission today presented a proposal for a legal framework for data sharing and the European data economy, the so-called Data Governance Act
Bitkom president Achim Berg comments:
We highly welcome that the EU wants to build and implement European data spaces with the help of the Data Governance Act. It can form the basis for secure and sovereign data exchange between companies, private individuals and the public sector. The new framework focuses primarily on previously unused public sector data and its use. Public institutions, in particular, are sitting on large data treasures that have been lying idle for the most part. This needs to change if we in Europe are to promote data-driven innovation in areas such as health care, education, traffic control and smart cities.
The Data Governance Act must urgently reduce the widespread uncertainties regarding the use of data. It should not create additional obligations for data localisation that would further restrict data processing and international cooperation. What we need is a clear roadmap on how we can develop more innovation from shared data in the future. To achieve this, the EU must move away from the too narrow understanding of data austerity and improve data access. The aim must be to create common rules for data use and fill them with life. The proposed data intermediaries can offer new ways of doing this if they can be set up practically.
In addition, the numerous digital policy initiatives and projects such as GAIA-X or the European Alliance for Cloud and Data must be closely interlinked in future. The Data Governance Act can be the key to a data sovereign Europe, creating a balance between the use and protection of data. The COVID-19 crisis is a daily reminder of how important data can be, for example, for health protection and to contain a life-threatening pandemic. In Europe, we have so far failed to live up to this importance of data as the basis of a functioning and crisis-resistant community. The Data Governance Act can change this by removing barriers to innovation.
