Recital 7

Regulation (EU) 2022/868 of the European Parliament and of the Council²⁷ has established rules for intermediary functions in three different settings: (a) functions that support the re-use of protected data held by public sector bodies under controlled conditions; (b) data intermediation services that facilitate data sharing between data subjects, data holders and data users; and (c) data altruism organisations that support the use of data made available by data subjects and data holders on an altruistic or philanthropic basis. Functions supporting the re-use of protected data held by the public sector have a close link with rules of Directive (EU) 2019/1024 of the European Parliament and of the Council²⁸. Their interplay has caused confusion namely among public sector bodies. It is thus necessary to merge the two sets of rules. The evaluation of the rules on data intermediation services has shown that the definition of data intermediation service providers has weaknesses and that the rules are overly stringent for service providers to find a sustainable financial model. It is thus also necessary to streamline the regime. With respect to data altruism, certain rules of Regulation (EU) 2022/868, notably the obligation on Member States to have national policies on data altruism in place, the establishment of a ‘rulebook’ and developing a European data altruism consent form appear unnecessary regulation, also in light of on-going work by the European Data Protection Board referred to in Article 68 of Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council²⁹ on guidance on the processing of personal data in the context of scientific research.