White Paper on the Data Governance Act

The White Paper offers an academic perspective to the discussion on the Data Governance Act proposal ("DGA proposal"), as adopted by the European Commission in November 2020. It contains a legal analysis of the DGA proposal and includes recommendations to amend its shortcomings. The White Paper aims to cover the full spectrum of the DGA proposal and therefore offers an in-depth analysis of its main provisions. In conclusion, the authors identify general patterns at work with the DGA proposal, namely, first, the (new) regulation of data as an object and, even more so, as an object of rights. This approach, the authors find, may contribute to exacerbate the risk of contradictions of the DGA proposal with the GDPR on the level of principles. Second, it discusses the relationship of the DGA proposal vis-à-vis the (regulation of) European data spaces and more generally its place in the two-pillars approach of the EC, between horizontal (sector-agnostic) and sectoral regulation of data. Finally, the DGA proposal is identified as a cornerstone of the new EU 'digital sovereignty' policy.