Brussels, 26 October. The European Parliament Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) committee draft report on the Data Act produced by rapporteur Ms Pilar del Castillo Vera (EPP, ES), was published in September. In view of the deadline for amendments in the committee set for Friday 28 October, Small Business Standards (SBS) shares its views on some of the outstanding points of the draft report.
SBS welcomes the draft report and shares the rapporteur’s opinion that given the current state of technological development there is a risk of over-burdening SMEs by imposing further design obligations to the products they design or manufacture, or to the related services they might provide.
More in detail, SBS particularly supports the rapporteur’s proposals to:
- exclude all micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) from further design obligations in relation to products manufactured or designed and related services provided under Chapter II (recital 37 and article 7.1).
- exclude all MSMEs from the obligations to make data available to public authorities under Chapter V (recital 56 and article 14.2).
Extending these exemptions from additional administrative requirements also to medium-sized enterprises will strengthen their ability to innovate since they are in a position where they can allocate more resources to provide better products, services, and enhanced user experience.
Furthermore, SBS also supports the spirit of amendment 90 on article 28(4) and would like to suggest an improvement by adding an explicit reference to SMEs to the original amendment proposed by the rapporteur: The Commission may, in accordance with article 10 of Regulation (EU) No 1025/2012, request one or more European standardisation organisations to draft harmonised standards that satisfy the essential requirements under paragraph 1 of this article and are developed in an open, transparent, technology-neutral, SME-friendly and industry-driven manner.
