June 6, 2017

The dialogue with stakeholders follows the adoption of the Commission’s Communication on Building a European Data Economy and its accompanying Staff Working Document in January 2017. As well as the workshops, the dialogue consists of a public online consultation that took place from 10 January to 26 April 2017. Results from the dialogue will feed into the Commission’s initiatives on data announced in the Mid-term review of the 2015 Digital Single Market strategy, which was adopted on 10 May 2017.

The dialogue focuses on:

• rules and regulations impeding the free flow of data and options to remove unjustified or disproportionate data location restrictions; and
• legal issues on access to and transfer of data, data portability and liability of non-personal, machine-generated digital data.

The aim is to gather more evidence on the functioning of the data markets by sector and to explore possible solutions. The Commission says that a broad macro-level discussion is essential for “debating possible solutions and avoiding unintended side-effects that would stifle innovation or hinder competition.” It will hold sector-specific discussions with relevant stakeholders in the data value chain.

As well as the workshops that took place in May, the Commission is organising a series of workshops in June and July 2017. For details of the workshops and to read the Commission’s announcement in full, click here.