Since the European Parliament approved in mid-March the processing of the future Data Regulation, numerous European and American companies have publicly expressed their criticism of being forced to share the data generated by their smart devices and other consumer goods. The last ones have been the Germans siemens and SAP.
The new regulations are being negotiated by the European Parliament, the Council of the EU and the Commission, although the objective is to build a single digital market that would enable the EU to achieve its digital and green goals. But companies such as the two previously mentioned, in addition to brainlab either dateamong others, claim a moratorium introducing changes to the proposals. Otherwise, they assure that irreparable damage would be generated in the competitiveness of many companies, and therefore, the destruction of millions of jobs.
For the United States the new Data Law is too restrictive, while for German companies the fact of sharing data with third parties, such as basic technical knowledge and design data, puts trade secrets at risk. Thus, EU companies would be forced to disclose data to countries that do not operate in Europe. The great beneficiary of all this would be Chinawhich would obtain an important competitive advantage.
The public letter presented by German companies includes the need to reject requests to share data if trade secrets, cybersecurity, health or safety are in danger. Similarly, they request that customers be allowed a contractual freedom to change your cloud service provider and agree on the contracts that best suit your needs.
From the European Parliament it is estimated that currently 80% of industrial data is not used, so the objective is to take advantage of all the available information. With the approval of the regulation, users of IoT devices will be able to access and share all the information generated by their devices, as long as it is not personal data.
In the letter addressed to those responsible for the standard, Ursula von der Leyen (President of the European Commission), Margrethe Vestager (Commissioner of Competition), Thierry Breton (Commissioner for the Internal Market) and the Swedish Presidency of the Union, it is stated that companies have been investing in R&D for years and that if data is now shared, the guarantees of future European business models will be destroyed.
The keys to the new Data Regulation
The Data Law emerged in early 2022 as a draft proposed by the European Commission. Along these lines, the Internal Market commissioner, Thierry Breton, warned of the loss of personal data that generated significant volumes of business such as that of social networks, so now it was necessary to safeguard key industrial data for the new european digital space.
The Data Regulation contemplates aspects business to business (B2B) either business to government (B2G). Data generators can demand compensation for sharing it, so big companies will be charged for access to that data from their profit margin. In this way, they will be able to optimize their processes and improve the performance of their resources.
For their part, public administrations will have extraordinary access to the industrial data of private companies to prevent emergencies. In the case of consumers, it is committed to creating a concept of smart home appliance that allows sharing of the data generated and that has a repair service other than the original.
For the deputy in the European Parliament, the Spanish Pillar of the Castlethe use of industrial data could mean an increase of up to 260,000 million euros additional GDP in Europe for 2028.