Introduction
On 12 September 2025, most provisions of the “Data Act” (Regulation (EU) 2023/2854) became applicable. As of that date, the persons/entities designated in the Data Act are expected to comply with it. For some market participants, this means they will need to adjust the content of the contracts they use. In other words: the Data Act has consequences for contracting practice. To help our fellow contract-drafters, we wrote a piece about the imjpact of the Data Act on the content of agreements. In this contribution, we aim to provide a concrete and as complete as possible overview of the Data Act’s impact on the pre-contractual phase and on the content of contracts that (in whole or in part) concern data. At the end of the article, we have included checklists as an annex that can be used when drafting and negotiating contracts.
What does the Data Act aim to regulate?
The core purpose of the Data Act is to lay down rules for “fair access to” and “fair use of” data. The Data Act focuses in particular on non-personal data.
The different chapters of the Data Act cover various data-related topics. Among other things, the Data Act provides rules on:
a) making product data and data from a related service available to the user of the connected product or the related service;
b) making data available by data holders to data recipients;
c) in short: making data available by data holders to various (public) authorities in cases of exceptional need;
d) facilitating switching between data processing services;
e) introducing safeguards against unauthorised third-party access to non-personal data; and
f) developing interoperability standards for data to be accessed, transmitted, and used.
For contracting practice, topics (a), (b), and (d) are particularly relevant, and these are therefore the subjects that will be central to our contribution.
You can find our contribution (in Dutch) via this link.
Feel free to contact us if you desire an English translation and/or PDF.
