Article 2

(4c) ‘access’ means data use, in accordance with specific technical, legal or organisational requirements, without necessarily implying the transmission or downloading of data;

Justification

The proposed definition risks reducing ‘access’ to mere in-situ or view-only consultation under conditions unilaterally determined by the data holder, without guaranteeing transmission, downloading, portability or effective re-use of data. This would undermine the practical effectiveness of Data Act access rights, contradict the Regulation’s logic of machine-readable and retrievable data access, weaken innovation and downstream services, and reinforce the market power of data holders at the expense of users, SMEs and third-party providers.

(c) the following points (28a) and (28b) are inserted: (28a) ‘bodies governed by public law’ means bodies that have all of the following characteristics: (a) they are established for the specific purpose of meeting needs in the general interest, not having an industrial or commercial character; (b) they have legal personality; (c) they are financed, for the most part by the State, regional or local authorities, or by other bodies governed by public law; or are subject to management supervision by those authorities or bodies; or have an administrative, managerial or supervisory board, more than half of whose members are appointed by the State, regional or local authorities, or by other bodies governed by public law; (28b) ‘public undertaking’ means any undertaking over which a public sector body may exercise directly or indirectly a dominant influence by virtue of their ownership of it, their financial participation therein, or the rules which govern it. A dominant influence on the part of the public sector bodies shall be presumed in any of the following cases in which those bodies, directly or indirectly: (a) hold the majority of the undertaking’s subscribed capital; (b) control the majority of the votes attaching to shares issued by the undertaking; (c) can appoint more than half of the undertaking’s administrative, management or supervisory body;’;

Justification

This amendment preserves the existing definition in order to maintain greater legal clarity and ensure that the notion of bodies governed by public law continues to be interpreted in a manner consistent with the public-interest objectives of the Regulation. Keeping the definition directly in the text also helps avoid unintended interpretative extensions that could broaden its scope beyond what is necessary in the context of the Data Act.

(28a) ‘bodies governed by public law’ means bodies that have all of the following characteristics: (a) they are established for the specific purpose of meeting needs in the general interest, not having an industrial or commercial character; (b) they have legal personality; (c) they are financed, for the most part by the State, regional or local authorities, or by other bodies governed by public law; or are subject to management supervision by those authorities or bodies; or have an administrative, managerial or supervisory board, more than half of whose members are appointed by the State, regional or local authorities, or by other bodies governed by public law;

Justification

This amendment preserves the existing definition in order to maintain greater legal clarity and ensure that the notion of bodies governed by public law continues to be interpreted in a manner consistent with the public-interest objectives of the Regulation. Keeping the definition directly in the text also helps avoid unintended interpretative extensions that could broaden its scope beyond what is necessary in the context of the Data Act.

(28b) ‘public undertaking’ means any undertaking over which a public sector body may exercise directly or indirectly a dominant influence by virtue of their ownership of it, their financial participation therein, or the rules which govern it. A dominant influence on the part of the public sector bodies shall be presumed in any of the following cases in which those bodies, directly or indirectly: (a) hold the majority of the undertaking’s subscribed capital; (b) control the majority of the votes attaching to shares issued by the undertaking; (c) can appoint more than half of the undertaking’s administrative, management or supervisory body;;

Justification

This amendment preserves the existing definition in order to maintain greater legal clarity and ensure that the notion of bodies governed by public law continues to be interpreted in a manner consistent with the public-interest objectives of the Regulation. Keeping the definition directly in the text also helps avoid unintended interpretative extensions that could broaden its scope beyond what is necessary in the context of the Data Act.

(ca) point (29) is replaced by the following:

(29) ‘public emergency’ means an exceptional situation, limited in time, such as a public health emergency, an emergency resulting from natural disasters, a human-induced major disaster, including a major cybersecurity incident, negatively affecting the population of the Union or the whole or part of a Member State, with a risk of serious and lasting repercussions for living conditions or economic stability, financial stability, or the substantial and immediate degradation of economic assets in the Union or the relevant Member State and which is determined or officially declared in accordance with the relevant procedures under Union or national law; for the purposes of this Regulation, “responding to a public emergency” refers to the immediate actions necessary to address and manage the emergency while it is ongoing, whereas “mitigating or supporting the recovery from a public emergency” refers to actions taken after or once the immediate phase of the emergency has passed, aimed at limiting its consequences and restoring normal conditions;

Justification

This amendment introduces a clearer and harmonised definition of ‘public emergency’ in order to improve legal certainty and avoid divergent interpretations across Member States. It also helps ensure that emergency-related data access mechanisms remain limited to genuinely exceptional and time-bound situations. It also clarifies the distinction between the immediate response phase of a public emergency and broader mitigation or recovery activities.

(d) the following pointspoint (38a) and (38b) areis inserted:

(38a) ‘data intermediation service’ means a service which aims to establish relationships of an economic character for the purposes of data sharing between an undetermined number of data subjects or data holders and data users, through technical, legal or other means, including for the purpose of exercising the rights of data subjects in relation to personal data, and which: (1) do not have as their main purpose the intermediation of copyright-protected content; (2) are not jointly procured by several legal persons for exclusive use among them;

Justification

The original Data Governance Act definition ensured a clear distinction between neutral data intermediation and the economic exploitation of data. Its safeguards and exclusions, including for copyright-focused services, closed ecosystems and services monetising data for their own purposes, are essential for legal certainty. Many current concerns stem precisely from the weakening of these elements.

(38b) ‘data altruism’ means the voluntary sharing of data on the basis of the consent of data subjects to process personal data pertaining to them, or of permissions of data holders to allow the use of their non-personal data without seeking or receiving a reward that goes beyond fair compensation related to the actual costs that they incur where they make their data available for objectives of general interest as provided for in nationalaccordance with Union law and, where applicable, national law, such as healthcare, combating climate change, improving mobility, facilitating the development, production and dissemination of official statistics, improving the provision of public services, public policy making or scientific research purposes in the general interest;

Justification

This amendment helps strengthen legal certainty and ensures that objectives of general interest are interpreted consistently within the existing EU legal framework, including applicable data protection rules.

(49) ‘dynamic data’ in the context of Chapter VIIc means data and documents in a digital form, subject to frequent or real-time updates, in particular because of their volatility or rapid obsolescence; data generated by sensors are typically considered to be dynamic data;

(50) ‘research data’ means data or documents, other than scientific publications, which are collected or produced in the course of scientific research activities and are used as evidence in the research process, or are commonly accepted in the research community as necessary to validate research findings andor results;

(51) ‘re-use’ means the use by natural persons or legal entitiespersons of data or documents held by: