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Stakeholder Dialogue on Building a European data economy

This dialogue with stakeholders follows the adoption of the Communication on Building a European Data Economy and its accompanying Staff Working Document. Results will feed into the Commission’s initiatives on data announced in the Mid-term review of the 2015 Digital Single Market strategy.

The stakeholder dialogue follows the adoption of the Communication on Building a European Data Economy and its accompanying Staff Working Document on 10 January 2017. This dialogue consists of a public online consultation that took place from 10 January to 26 April 2017, and workshops on specific issues and with targeted stakeholders.

The reports from the discussions of these workshops feed into the follow-up actions related to data announced in the Communication on the Mid-Term Review of the 2015 Digital Single Market strategy, adopted on 10 May 2017. This stakeholder dialogue focuses on:

  • rules and regulations impeding the free flow of data and present 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 exploring possible solutions. In this context, a broad macro-level discussion is essential for debating possible solutions and avoiding unintended side-effects that would stifle innovation or hinder competition. Besides, the European Commission holds sector-specific discussions with relevant stakeholders in the data value chain.


Within this stakeholder dialogue, the European Commission organises a series of workshops in May, June and July 2017:

  1. EIP-AGRI workshop on data sharing (Bratislava, 4-5 April 2017).
  2. Workshop on switching cloud providers: issues and challenges (Brussels, 18 May 2017). The workshop has two separate yet related goals: to present of the existing barriers limiting - or even preventing - data and/or application portability within cloud ecosystems identified in the context of the aforementioned study creating a high risk for customer lock-in and to identify a set of potential measures to address the barriers discussed, including the potential introduction of a new right to data portability that would not be limited only to a specific type of data.
  3. Webinar on data access and data sharing: the real impact on SMEs’ and start-ups' business models (online, 29 May 2017).
  4. Workshop with Member States representatives on the emerging issues of the data economy (Brussels, 31 May 2017). It assembles national experts from the EU Member States, in order to exchange opinions on the ways forward with regard to the emerging issues of the data economy such as access and transfer of non-personal data, data portability, liability in relation to IoT and Artificial intelligence.
  5. Workshop on the transformative effect of access and re-use of data for smart industries (Brussels, 6 June 2017).
  6. Workshop on data access and transfer with a focus on APIs and industrial data platforms (Brussels, 8 June 2017).
  7. Data economy workshop, Digital Assembly (Malta, 15 and 16 June 2017).
  8. Workshop on access to commercially-held data of public interest for public bodies (Brussels, 26 June 2017).
  9. Workshop on liability in the area of autonomous systems and advanced robots and Internet of Things systems (Brussels, 13 July 2017).

Related content

Workshop on data access and transfer with a focus on APIs and industrial data platforms

Event | 08 June 2017

With this workshop, the Commission intended to discuss the current state of data-sharing in B2B contexts with a specific focus on the potential of technical solutions such as Application Programming Interfaces, data market places and industrial data platforms. Also, it discussed the potential of default contract rules and recommended standard contract clauses.