High-level conference on free movement of data as the future fifth freedom of the EU

Progress in innovative data-processing techniques and smarter artificial intelligence are changing many industrial sectors at an unprecedented pace. Public administration will increase the personalisation level of digital services for citizens and businesses thanks to more accessible and faster exploitation of the data available.

Miloš Koterec

Brussels (17 October 2016) - Industrial data, in the context of the free flow of data, is becoming an increasingly important topic, including in the European Union. It is the fundamental building block for the data economy and new digital services. These are often restricted for reasons relating to the data repository, access to data or simply due to pending legislative issues. Taking into account that each country has a different data policy, 28 non-regulated markets definitely do not help to achieve an efficiently run European environment that has the ambition to compete with other global economies and to ensure sustainable growth and job creation by supporting the data economy. By eliminating restrictions, the new EU data policy will in principle unlock substantial economic potential and thus support the emergence of innovative solutions.

These were today's topics for discussion by members of the business community, public administration representatives and legal experts at a high-level conference in Brussels.

The conference was opened by Günther H. Oettinger, Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society and Miloš Koterec, diplomatic adviser to the Deputy Prime Minister for Investments and Informatisation.

'Progress in innovative data-processing techniques and smarter artificial intelligence are changing many industrial sectors at an unprecedented pace. We can already anticipate that transport will change, with fully automated self-driving cars on the streets of our cities. Schools will introduce tailor-made studies. Public administration will increase the personalisation level of digital services for citizens and businesses thanks to more accessible and faster exploitation of the data available', said Miloš Koterec in his introductory remarks.

Another data policy expert to speak at the conference was Ms Dagmar Bošanská, who presented in more detail the Slovak vision of better use of data in the public sector. In her presentation Ms Bošanská emphasised that in accordance with the future EU policy Slovakia would remove the legal barriers to open access to data and use of data for analytical purposes while ensuring reasonable protection of personal data. She added that the security of cyberspace was also of great importance for a functioning data economy.

The Estonian representative, Luukas Ilves, identified data as the future fifth freedom and thus followed up on the initial concept underlying the Presidency's priorities.