The EU Commission is planning a ‘Data Act’, which, among other things, will regulate the use and transfer of data in the EU, according to a key executive at VDMA.

 

Hartmut Rauen, Deputy Executive Director of the VDMA – Mechanical Engineering Industry Association, which represents more than 3,400 German and European companies of the mechanical engineering industry – said the draft Data Act that has now become known contains approaches that encroach too far on entrepreneurial freedom. “Data access and information obligations, restrictions on contractual freedom, requirements for technical design and much more: such legislative intervention can only be justified if, without these measures, there would be market distortions and unfair data blockades,” he asserted. “This is different in the mechanical engineering sector, which is dominated by small and medium-sized enterprises. Here, past practice has clearly shown that the parties involved can find a negotiation result that is fair and commercially sensible for all sides within the framework of contractual freedom,” he argued.

“The proposed rules are therefore neither necessary nor purposeful for our industry,” Mr Rauen continued. “We fear that the regulatory approaches will interfere too much with well-functioning data relationships between industrial partners and cause uncertainty and burdens for innovative mechanical engineering companies,” VDMA’s Deputy Executive Director lamented. “For Industry 4.0, the Data Act could thus prove to be a disservice."