For a brief overview of the key points of the adopted text and its significance for the citizen, please see the corresponding summary note.

As foreseen in the May 2017 mid-term Review of the Digital Single Market strategy and in the Commission work programme 2018, the Commission is preparing an initiative on accessibility and re-use of public and publicly funded data.

The directive from 2003 on the re-use of public sector information (widely known as the PSI directive) is a core element of the European strategy to open up government data for further economic exploitation. It was reviewed in July 2013 to encourage member states to make as much material held by public sector bodies available for re-use as possible to foster transparency, data-based innovation and fair competition.

The Commission has performed a public consultation between 12 September 2017 and 12 December 2017 to evaluate the implementation of the PSI directive and to get feedback on how to improve accessibility and re-use of public and publicly funded data as well as on access to privately held data of public interest.

On 25 April 2018 the Commission published a legislative proposal to review the PSI directive. The aim of the current revision is to strengthen the position of SMEs by dismantling market barriers to reusing public sector information for commercial purposes. The review identified among others the following three barriers:

1. data generated by utilities, transport and publicly funded research has tremendous reuse potential, but is not covered by the current rules, even though much of this research is fully or partly funded by public money

2. real-time access to public sector information is rare. This prevents the development of products and services using real-time information, such as meteorological and transport apps

3. the re-use of PSI data can be very expensive, depending on the public institution offering it.

In its conclusions of 25 and 26 June 2015 and those from 15 December 2016, the European Council called for action to ensure the free flow of data. Similar calls came from the Estonian Presidency of the Council of the EU in its Vision Paper on the Free Movement of Data.

In its resolution on EU eGovernment action plan 2016-2020 from 16 May 2017, the European Parliament has stressed the importance of ‘open data’ to be made be made available and calls for public administrations to make as much information available as possible, especially when the volume of data generated is very large, such as in the case of the INSPIRE programme.

Within the European Parliament the file has been assigned to the Industry committee (ITRE), (rapporteur Neoklis Sylikiotis, GUE/NGL, Cyprus) The Internal Market and Consumer Protection (IMCO), Culture and Education (CULT), Civil Liberties (LIBE) and Legal Affairs committees (JURI) have been asked for an opinion, wheras IMCO acts also as an associated committee.

On 10 July 2018, the Commission presented the proposal to the ITRE committee. On 12 September 2018 the Committee draft report was published. The deadline for tabling amendments was on 11 October 2018. Following the presentation of the draft report by the rapporteur on 9 October 2018, ITRE Members tabled 266 amendments in addition to the 58 proposed by the rapporteur in his draft report. On 5 November, the ITRE committee considered the tabled amendments during its meeting. The rapporteur supports that Member States would encourage the use of open licences but the decision on whether or not to authorise re-use of any or all documents would need to remain with the public undertaking concerned, as should the modalities. The rapporteur considers that Parliament should propose a list of categories for high value datasets, empowering the Commission to adopt delegated acts to supplement the list of high value datasets (as set out in Annex Ia of the draft report) and to further specify the high value datasets. On the digitalisation of cultural resources, the rapporteur proposes to reduce the period of exclusive agreements from the ten years proposed by the Commission to seven years.

On 11 October 2018 the IMCO opinion was adopted in committee with 30 votes in favour, one against and 6 abstentions. It proposes to rename the text to ‘Open Data and re-use of public sector information‘. In that spirit it recommends that Member States design policies with the principle of “open by design and by default”, with regards to all documents falling within the scope of the Directive and it proposes a number of amendments to improve the re-use of data even further, for instance by ensuring that data is released under the least restrictive conditions or licensing terms. It also asks for the re-use of data to be free of charge, limiting further the public sector possibilities to charge for data to very narrowly defined circumstances.

The report was adopted in the ITRE committee on 3 December 2018 as well as the mandate to enter into interinstitutional negotiations. This was validated by Parliament during the December 2018 Strasbourg plenary session. During the trilogue negotiations on 22 January 2019, a provisional agreement was reached. This was approved in ITRE committee on 19 February 2019 and by Parliament on the 4 April 2019 plenary.

At the Transport, Telecommunications and Energy Council on 8 June 2018, ministers held a policy debate on the proposal around a set of questions prepared by the presidency in a background document. The Council agreed its negotiating position on 7 November 2018.

The updated directive was adopted by the European Parliament on 4 April 2019 and by the Council on 6 June 2019. It was signed by the President of the European Parliament and of the Council on 20 June 2019, and published in the Official Journal of 26 June 2019. The regulation entered into force on 17 July 2019.

References:

• EP Legislative Observatory, Procedure file Re-use of public sector information (Recast), 2018/0111(COD)
• European Commission, proposal for a directive on the re-use of public sector information (recast), COM(2018) 234
• European Commission, Directive on the re-use of public sector information, Directive 2013/37/EU
• European Commission, Building a European data economy, COM(2017) 9
• European Commission, Communication on the Mid-Term Review on the implementation of the Digital Single Market Strategy A Connected Digital Single Market for All, COM(2017) 228
• Estonian Vision Paper on the Free Movement of Data - the Fifth Freedom of the European Union, 2017
• European Council, Conclusions 19-20/10/2017
• Council negotiating position, 7 November 2018
• Transport, Telecommunications and Energy Council background note , 8/6/2018
• European Parliament, EU eGovernment action plan 2016-2020, 2016/2273(INI)

Further reading:

• European Parliament, EPRS, Public Sector Information, RECAST, Briefing, March 2019

Author: Maria del Mar Negreiro Achiaga, Members' Research Service, legislative-train@europarl.europa.eu