Data-related Legislation

European Data Spaces

The European Commission intends to develop sectoral data spaces in strategic areas such as health, mobility, and agriculture. Cross-sectoral actions are meant to link these different spaces to create a European data space. Science Europe:

• welcomes the commitment to facilitate cross-sectoral access to data;
• strongly supports the development of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) as a data space for research. Key principles and lessons learnt in the EOSC development can inform the development of other sectoral data spaces;
• stresses the importance of defining appropriate rules and standards for access, use, interoperability, and re-use of data;
• wants to ensure interoperability among data spaces without relaxing sectoral data-sharing standards.

Regulation on Data Governance

To provide a legal basis for data spaces and cross-sectoral data exchange, the European Commission issued a proposal for a Regulation on data governance. It aims to increase data availability by addressing four different points:

• making public sector data available for re-use, in situations where such data is subject to the rights of others;
• data sharing amongst businesses;
• allowing personal data to be used with the help of a ‘personal data-sharing intermediary’, who is supposed to help individuals exercise their rights under the GDPR;
• allowing data sharing and use for purposes of general interest (‘data altruism’).

Science Europe monitors the legislative process closely to identify potential impact of the regulation for its members and the wider research sector.

Digital Services Act

The European Commission reacts to the rapid development of online platforms and services and strives to update existing EU legislation on digital services and platforms. The revised legislation aims to harmonise the definition of responsibilities and obligations of the wide spectrum of digital services and online platforms to protect all users of digital services. It will also aim to define rules to ensure that markets characterised by large platforms remain fair.

Science Europe has provided feedback on the EC’s plans for the updated legislation based on the needs of its members:

• Science Europe welcomes the Commission’s intention in general, but asks for a refinement of the plans.
• The foreseen scope of the new legislation is not entirely clear. Recent legislative acts, such as the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market, have shown that legislation aimed at large commercial entities can have unintended effects on other sectors, such as research, if the scope of the legislation is not clearly defined.
• Science Europe calls for a clear exclusion of data users and usage for the purposes of scientific research from the scope of the Digital Services Act, to avoid unintended effects on research activities. Very strict rules that unintentionally apply to scientific data storage could hinder data access if research platforms have to cease offering specific services.

Copyright Directive (2019)

Researchers who use cutting-edge digital technologies such as text and data mining (TDM) need to be able to do so without legal uncertainty even when working in collaborative projects with private partners. Science Europe worked with its members to ensure that the European copyright legislation, adopted in 2019, took into account researchers needs.

In its September 2016 proposal for a revised Copyright Directive, the European Commission included a copyright exception for large-scale digital analysis of data by research institutions, known as TDM.

Science Europe, in collaboration with like-minded stakeholders, successfully advocated to extend this exception to include commercial entities, as in a modern research environment scientists frequently collaborate with commercial partners and the same rights must also apply to them.