Sharing is caring? EU proposes new rules to fuel ‘data altruism’
THE European Commission wants EU citizens to volunteer more of their personal information to help optimize healthcare, urban transport or energy grids, and is proposing rules for sharing platforms to encourage “data altruism.”
The new data governance act - presented on Wednesday - “is all about providing a safe environment for those who wish to share data,” EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager told reporters in Brussels.
“You don’t have to share all data,” the bloc’s top digital affairs official said. But citizens should be able to do so in a “trusted and protected” manner, she added.
With the new legal framework, the EU’s executive branch aims to ensure that data flows through independent trustees rather than through US corporations such as Amazon, Google or Facebook.
These trustees will be based in the EU. In addition, they will act as intermediaries between the data producers and data users, but will not be allowed to use the data for commercial purposes.
The European Union has a touchy relationship with the US-dominated global technology industry, and has pushed back against what it views as data privacy violations and anti-competitive practices involving information by firms like Apple, Amazon and Facebook.
To shift this perceived imbalance, the EU executive wants to set up “European data spaces” where businesses, governments and researchers can store and access information.
These spaces should contribute “to the green transition by improving the management of energy consumption, make delivery of personalised medicine a reality, and facilitate access to public services,” according to a Commission press release.
From autos to vaccines, access to industrial data is critical to the future of the global economy and the EU is worried that lack of trust among member states will stifle growth.
Brussels is also keen to protect European businesses from the supremacy of the US and China, the global superpowers widely perceived to dominate the digital economy in Europe.
And data privacy is a huge issue in Europe, where a series of top-level court cases threatened to shut down US tech giants’ access to the EU.
The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, unveiled proposals to overcome those barriers and allow data to flow across borders and help businesses compete unimpeded.