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This major proposal aims to promote the availability of data for reuse across sectors and borders. It is expected to play a central role in enabling and guiding the creation of EU-wide common interoperable data spaces in strategic sectors such energy, mobility and health.
Today’s discussion showed the ever-increasing importance of data for our society and economy, as well as the vital need to make it more available. For this, we need secure and trusted structures and processes, and this is what data governance is all about.
Peter Altmaier, German Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy and chair of today’s meeting
During the discussion, ministers broadly welcomed the proposal as an important enabler for a strong European data economy and increased competitiveness.
Ministers generally deemed it important to encourage data sharing by individuals and businesses. For this, it is essential to strengthen citizens’ and businesses’ trust in sharing data. To create the conditions for trust, it is crucial to have a clear and transparent legislative framework, which safeguards privacy and security.
Many ministers emphasised the need to have a human-centric approach, with citizens in control of their data.
A number of delegations stressed the importance of interoperability for sharing data and avoiding lock-in effects.
Several ministers mentioned international data flows and the need to respect the EU’s trade commitments in this regard and to ensure a level playing field. Some of them pointed to cooperation with like-minded trade partners in this area.
Today’s debate will provide guidance for forthcoming discussions on the proposal in the telecommunications working party. The Portuguese minister mentioned that the data governance act would be a high priority for the incoming Portuguese presidency.