Why do CEETTAR Members care for the Data Act?

Agricultural, rural and forestry contractors are willing to develop a secure and efficient data economy, which will contribute, among other things, to foster the comprehensive application of digital technologies such as the internet of things and artificial intelligence uptake by our sector.

In this context, the European Commission’s proposal, called the “Data Act” (COM/2022/68 final), sets up rules on who can use and access what data for which purposes across all EU economic sectors, including agriculture and forestry. 

The data protection principle is one of the main priorities of the current Database Directive (96/9/EC, from 1996). That directive introduced sui generis rights to databases protection, as the producer of a database is the one obtaining, verifying, and presenting the data. Since its first adoption, the Directive was evaluated twice. Both evaluations concluded with the need to balance intellectual property protection of such databases, with support for innovation.

Obstacles remain in the current EU Data Act proposal. For example, data protection is one of the major difficulties faced by contractors, to better monitor and exploit the data they collect. Improvement in data quality means greater investment opportunities for our contractors. These additional profit opportunities will foster contractors to invest in data, which will indirectly benefit the entire sector.

Please click HERE to download the full text in PDF format of the CEETTAR position paper on the EU Data Act.