The Value of Europe is the Europe of Values [Promoted content]

Last month, European lawmakers proclaimed the EU’s Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values programmes as the largest ever amount of EU funding dedicated to promoting the bloc’s values such as democracy and fundamental rights.

With China and the U.S. trying to assure their dominance in Artificial Intelligence (AI) development and deployment, the European Union is making its first steps to take the global lead in the governance of AI, grounding its approach on EU founding rights and values.

The exponential growth and importance of data generated in industrial settings have attracted the attention of policymakers aiming to create a suitable legal framework for its use. While the term ‘industrial data’ has no clear definition, such data possess certain distinctive characteristics: they are a subset of big data collected in a structured manner and within industrial settings; they are frequently proprietary and contain various types of sensitive data. The GDPR rules remain of great relevance for such data, as personal data is difficult to be filtered out from mixed datasets and anonymisation techniques are not always effective. The current and planned rules relevant for B2B sharing of industrial data exhibit many shortcomings. They lack clarity on key issues (e.g. mixed datasets), increase the administrative burden for companies, yet not always provide the data protection that businesses need. They do not provide an additional value proposition for B2B data sharing and hinder it in some cases. While this situation warrants policy intervention, both the instrument and its content should be carefully considered. Instead of a legal instrument, soft law could clarify the existing rules; model terms and conditions could be developed and promoted and data standardisation and interoperability efforts supported.

Source : © European Union, 2021 – EP

On 7 May, the Social Summit organised by the Portuguese Presidency should be a milestone to reinvigorate the project of a fairer Europe. SGI Europe, EU social partner representing employers of services of general interest (SGI) and of public services, will present its vision and contribution to making Social Europe a reality.