Regulating Big Data – European Commission Introduces Data Governance Bill

The European Commission published on November 25, 2020 a proposal for a Regulation on European Data Governance, also dubbed the Data Governance Act. It is one of several incoming pieces of legislation proposed at the EU level (including the Digital Services Act, expected in early December) in order to accomplish the European Strategy for Data, adopted in February 2020, and create an EU single market for data.

The Data Governance Act will introduce:

1. Rules for making public sector data available for reuse, in situations where such data is subject to rights of others (like intellectual property or data protection rights)
2. A framework allowing companies to share industrial data in common data lakes, called European Data Spaces