ITI Reacts to the European Data Act Proposal
BRUSSELS – Global tech trade association ITI issued the following statement in reaction to the publication of the Data Act Proposal by the European Commission:
“The Data Act can be an important tool to guarantee harmonized rules for fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory data sharing and should, at the same time, preserve economic incentives for all market operators.” said Guido Lobrano, Director General for Europe at ITI. “ITI strongly supports the goal to further and facilitate data access and use, which is essential to stimulate innovation and grow the European data economy. However, we urge policymakers to focus on incentives, rather than mandates, to increase data sharing between businesses based on existing industry best practices and with strong safeguards in place for the protection of intellectual property and trade secrets. The Data Act must also not unjustifiably restrict cross-border data flows, so as to avoid harming the global competitiveness of businesses in the EU. Our industry is also supportive of making efforts to improve switching between data processing services and data portability. Thus, the Data Act should avoid imposing rigid standards for portability, while taking specific situations and contexts into account and considering the data at play, its volume, the operator concerned, and available alternatives. Finally, from a global industry perspective, we encourage reliance on voluntary global industry-driven interoperability standards as a means to demonstrate compliance with regulatory requirements. ITI looks forward to working with policy makers going forward to ensure that the Data Act is a balanced and innovation-friendly piece of legislation.”
On 10 March 2022, 15.00-16.00 CET, ITI will host Yvo Volman, Acting Director for Data at DG Connect, European Commission, for a discussion about the proposal. Register here (opens in a new tab).
In September 2021, ITI responded to the EU Commission’s stakeholder consultation on the Data Act. Read the press release and the official submission here (opens in a new tab).
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