The Data Act: a leap into the unknown

On 1 February 2023, T&D Europe co-signed a joint industry statement on the European Commission’s legislative proposal for a Data Act.

The statement calls on the European Parliament and Council to recogonise the importance of data in contributing to the European Economy and the need for a regulatory framework that provides stability, clarity and certainty.

Specific requirements for the Data Act include:

Protection of trade secrets, privacy and security
Clear definitions for data and data holders
Recognition of the role of flexible contractual terms
Differentiation between B2B and B2C contexts
Strict conditions for B2G data requests
Promotion of cloud adoption
No new obstacles to international data flows
A longer transition period of a least 36 months

As stated by Christiane Mann, Chair of T&D Europe’s Grid Digitalisation Working Group,”The Data Act compromises do not provide the level of legal clarity we expect from a legislation. In particular, ambiguity must be avoided and trade secrets / IP must be adequately protected. The Data Act is too important to get wrong. We should allow for the time needed to iron out all details properly”.

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