In the pre-digital world, the situation was clear: if a household bought a dishwasher or a company bought a robot, the product was theirs alone.

He was then largely free to dispose of it.

In a world in which more and more products are networked with each other, things look different.

Cars send data to their manufacturers just as continuously as machines (keyword Industry 4.0) or household appliances.

But what if this data is needed for maintenance, optimizing operations or developing new offerings?

Does the user have a right to the data generated by him being made available to him?

Henrik Kafsack

Business correspondent in Brussels.

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So far, this has not been finally settled.

This is not only annoying for users who want to place orders with third parties.

It is – argues Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton – above all a missed opportunity.

"Only a small part of the industrial data is used, but the potential for growth and innovation is enormous," he emphasizes - for example in the development of artificial intelligence.

The amount of data is constantly increasing: while 33 zettabytes were generated in 2018, by 2025 it will probably be 175 zettabytes.

Breton complains that 80 percent of the data is never used.

He wants to change that with a data law that he officially presented in Brussels on Wednesday.

The Commission keeps its hands off the thorny question of who owns the data.

Instead, it wants to enable users – whether they are private individuals or companies – to access the data they have generated at any time, both legally and technically.

They should also be able to pass them on to third parties or have them access them immediately.

This means that nothing stands in the way of using the data.

The manufacturers of the networked products can charge fees for providing the data.

For small and medium-sized companies, however, these must not be higher than the actual costs.

Because the EU Commission is mainly concerned with promoting European SMEs, there is another restriction: the data must not go to Internet companies that, like Google, Amazon,

Brake on innovation or engine of innovation?

The response to the proposal varies depending on whether the data subjects are data providers or data consumers.

The Federation of Industry (BDI), for example, warns that the "Data Act" is well intentioned but not well done.

There is no structural market failure that justifies such far-reaching interventions in private autonomy.

The EU should focus on supporting voluntary data sharing.

The CSU MEP Markus Ferber sees the initiative as a brake on innovation: "Anyone who forces companies to exchange data with their competitors must accept that such data sets will not even be created in the future."

The Central Association of German Crafts (ZDH), on the other hand, emphasizes: "The EU Commission has rightly established that data generated through the use of products and services associated with them must be accessible in order to ensure fair competition." Intelligent products data generated in the household that craft businesses need in order to adapt their business models to customer requirements.

In fact, however, it is the manufacturers of smart devices or tech companies that use the exclusive access to the data in an anti-competitive manner.

It is therefore also important that the Commission wants to protect small companies by prohibiting unfair contractual practices when accessing the data.

The initiative also met with approval from consumer advocates, the Association of Municipal Entrepreneurs and the ZVEI.

"In order to be able to increase the value-added potential of industrial and machine data, data must be able to flow to the user and to the component developer," he says.

The SPD MEP Tiemo Wölken speaks of the "last missing piece of the puzzle of the digital agenda and a central building block for securing our digital sovereignty vis-à-vis the USA and China".

Member of Parliament Damian Boeselager (Volt) sees a paradigm shift: the legal uncertainty surrounding the sharing of data and the invisibility of data-based market power have meant that in the fight for data, only the rights of the strongest have applied so far.

The European Parliament and member states must approve the law for it to come into force.