Enabling European data cooperation Machine-generated data increasingly represent a central competition factor for German industrial companies and are a motor for economic growth and innovation. In principle, the high economic potential of the data economy develops optimally when economic players have access to data from other economic players, or exchange and mutually use such data in the form of cooperation. This applies to the data from the private sector and also to the access to and the use of machine-generated data in the public sector. It is time to create a legal framework in which the digital transformation of the industry can take place. European antitrust law is currently proving to be an obstacle to innovation for data cooperation between private companies. In particular for companies that are in mutual competition, there are antitrust concerns regarding the permissibility of data partnerships. This legal uncertainty for companies is due to the abolition of the formal notification system for potentially restrictive agreements and the introduction of the directly applicable exception system in European antitrust law.
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From then on, companies have had to assess antitrust law risks on their own, which leads to a reluctance to innovate, especially in view of the threat of high fines in the event of an incorrect assessment under antitrust law. In practice, many companies refrain from data cooperation projects solely because of the legal uncertainties under antitrust law. The currently applicable horizontal and vertical block exemption regulations, in conjunction with the guidelines issued by the European Commission, do little to remedy this situation, as their scope of application is very narrow. In order to better harness the great innovation potential of data cooperation, EU antitrust law must be opened up, more than in the past, to cooperation between competitors. In the area of access to public sector data, there is a need to extend the so-called open government data concepts. For private companies, such data has a great economic value, as it can be used to optimise their own processes, or to develop new business models. A free, and at the same time, uniform framework for access to public sector data throughout the Union is therefore of great importance for the entire European data economy.
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