Stakeholders in the EU are delivering on the EU’s Data Strategy, and it shows.

The Data Strategy, a good and easy read available in 23 languages, is the European strategy for data; its motto is facilitating access to high-quality data for society, businesses and public administrations to boost growth and create value. Its main provisions are basically:

1. Adopt legislative measures on data governance, access and re-use;
2. Opening up high-value publicly held datasets and allowing their re-use;
3. Enable access to secure, fair and competitive data processing, and;
4. Enable the investment of billions of Euros in European High Impact Projects to develop data processing infrastructures, data sharing tools, architectures and governance mechanisms for thriving data sharing and to federate energy-efficient and trustworthy cloud infrastructures and related services.

More can be found on the main informative website by the Commission.

Here are three examples of stakeholders delivering on EU’s Data Strategy:

A. Project BeOPEN, of which Arthur’s Legal is consortium partner, is one the examples that delivers on the Data Strategy, by opening up high-value publicly held datasets and allowing their re-use, and explore and address the challenges that come along the way when one implements the Data Strategy in eight (8) real-life pilots with compelling use cases across 6 EU member states. All this, to learn, improve and come up with a common framework with open source tools, replicable data pipelines, ontologies and best practices to perform open data collection, curation, sharing and other use and processing to address societal challenges, for society and planet at large.

B. Meanwhile, the Commission together with the Council and Parliament is steaming ahead with delivering legislative measures on data governance, access and re-use. The updated Open Data Directive is already in force, with the Data Governance Act final and entering into force early 2024. Last week another essential piece to the Data Strategy puzzle, the Data Act has also been agreed upon by Commission, Council and Parliament; we can expect the final text shortly. And the Commission is not done yet; there are quite some other policy initiatives on the roadmap to further deliver on the Data Strategy, and enable, facilitate and cater for data sharing and data value creation, and make Europe fit for the Digital Age.

C. As per the request of the Commission, in particular Commissioner Breton, the European Alliance for Industrial Data, Edge and Cloud has developed a Roadmap that serves as crucial input for the Commission in the definition of the upcoming European digital investment programmes, ensuring their alignment with the strategies, needs and goals of European businesses. All in all, the Roadmap is aimed to strengthen Europe's position in digital technologies and capabilities, and fosters the emergence of a vibrant and competitive European digital ecosystems, market, products, services, systems. The Roadmap was presented and formally handed-over to the Commission on 4 July 2023. With the EU Alliance and for the Roadmap, Arthur's Legal, Strategies & Systems leads the Digital Sovereignty Taskforce, and co-leads the Cybersecurity Taskforce, where it for once also contributed to the chapter about Data. The Roadmap is worth the read for sure as well. You can find more information about this special event here.