​​​​​​​​​On its meeting on 8 June 2017, members of the European Committee of the Regions' Commission for Social Policy, Education, Employment, Research and Culture (SEDEC) adopted unanimously the opinion "Building a European Data Economy", drafted by Mr Kieran McCarthy, Councillor in the Cork City Council.

In the opinion, Cllr. McCarthy proposed four lines of action to build a European data economy:

• Balancing transparency and innovation: creating a clear and adapted policy and legal framework for the data economy, removing remaining barriers and risks to the movement of data and addressing legal uncertainties created by new data technologies.

• Fostering the potential of General Data Protection Regulation: adopting strong data protection rules which can create the trust that will allow the development of digital economy across the internal market, addressing of forms of potential virtual criminality and the creation of effective and coherent preventative strategies.

• Developing the generation of data flows: insisting on the traceability and clear identification of data sources as a precondition for real control of data in the market because personal data generation raises questions in all policy areas of local and regional government.

• Improving interoperability: taking steps to make existing clouds or clouds under development at national, regional and possibly local level interconnectable and interoperable, exploiting the potential for standardisation.

Representatives of the European Commission welcomed the opinion as a clear and important message that local and regional authorities need and want to play a key role in the sustainable roll-out of the EU's Digital Agenda and the building of the EU data economy.

The opinion is set to be adopted by the European Committee of the Regions' plenary session in October this year.

Background

The Data Economy involves generation, collection, storage, processing, distribution, analysis, elaboration, delivery and exploitation of data enabled by digital technologies. This data enable market players to create applications with a great potential to improve daily life. The collation of data is an important element of the Digital Single Market (DSM). Local and regional authorities are keys in developing DSM via their roles in providing digital services, which represent the engine of economic growth at local and regional level offering opportunities for innovation and entrepreneurship.