European Commission’s data policy in 2022
In 2022 the European Commission will continue monitoring and enforcing the transposition of the Open Data Directive in all EU Member States. It will identify a list of ‘high-value datasets’, whose re-use can bring particular benefits for society, the environment and the economy. Such data will have to be available for re-use for free, in machine-readable format, via APIs and, where relevant, as a bulk download. Geospatial (INSPIRE) data will likely represent a very important part of high-value datasets. The Digital Europe Programme will support creation of common EU data spaces. In particular, a call on Open Data for AI provides funding for the public sector to get their data ready to meet the requirements of high-value datasets. Finally, two other upcoming pieces of legislation focus on easier sharing of data: the Data Governance Act (the Regulation to be adopted by the co-legislators in the spring) and the Data Act (the proposal was submitted to the co-legislators in February 2022).