The European Commission’s Data Governance Act (DGA) represents an important opportunity to develop a better culture of data sharing in Europe, ultimately contributing to boosting Europe’s data economy as well as driving the type of data collaborations that are necessary to support eh EU’s artificial intelligence and digital transformation objectives. Data is a crucial resource for economic growth, competitiveness, innovation, job creation and societal progress – particularly with the backdrop of the recovery from the COVID-19 crisis, it is invaluable for Europe to harness this potential, digitise its industries and compete globally. It is therefore more important than ever to ensure that the power of data can be harnessed and that data can be shared and re-used. Read AmCham EU's position on the DGA here.

To ensure the European Commission’s ambitions can become a reality, AmCham EU believes that some aspects of the proposed regulation could be clarified further. It will be important of course to ensure that the proposal achieves its stated goal of increasing data sharing in Europe, rather than unintentionally making collaboration more difficult and creating unnecessary confusion on the relationship with current legal frameworks. To help ensure the capacity of the EU’s digital ecosystem and businesses to innovate, AmCham EU outlined key recommendations touching upon the aspects of international access, data sharing services, re-use of public sector data, data altruism and the European Data Innovation Board (EDIB).

In parallel, Tanguy Van Overstraeten, AmCham EU’s Issue Lead for Privacy and Data Protection in the Digital Economy Committee, wrote a blog post emphasising the importance of cross-border data flows to the global economy, as the world’s GDP becomes ever-more digitised. Data governance must focus on enabling, rather than restricting cross-border data flows if we are to reap the full rewards of the new age of trade in digital services. Find the full blog post here.