Obligations for data intermediation services under the Data Governance Act

The Data Governance Act (»DGA«) is a fundamental pillar of the European data strategy. Its goal is to eliminate trust deficits and improve the availability and exchange of personal and non-personal data by having neutral third parties – data intermediation services – provide the necessary infrastructure and be regulated accordingly. In particular, startups and SMEs, which have limited financial and administrative resources, should be given the opportunity to participate in a non-discriminatory data exchange.

Of the 63 recitals and 36 articles of the regulation, especially Article 12 will be highly relevant, as it lists the conditions to which the provision of data intermediation services is subjected in a detailed but semi clear manner. However, the question of when a service is also a data intermediation service can only be answered – even if only to a certain extent – by taking an overall view of a large number of individual articles and recitals of the regulation.

The aim of this guide is to provide an initial, rough assessment of whether a data intermediation service is actually being provided in an individual case, and if so, which obligations this entails and what happens if the obligations are not met.