1. Introduction The current document comprises the fifth and final deliverable (Final Report – D5) to be produced under the contract between the European Commission and the Study Team, consisting of time.lex, Spark and T4i2, under the project ‘Cross-border data flow in the digital single market: study on data location restrictions study on data location restrictions’ (SMART 2015/0054). This study is organised against the backdrop of that Digital Single Market Strategy DSM Strategy), which was adopted by the Commission in May 2015. The Commission’s Communication on A Digital Single Market Strategy for Europe explicitly noted that: “[t]o benefit fully from the potential of digital and data technologies, we will need to remove a series of technical and legislative barriers. Restrictions, such as those related to data location (i.e. Member States requirements to keep data inside their territory) force service providers to build expensive local infrastructures (data centres) in each region or country. […] Any unnecessary restrictions regarding the location of data within the EU should both be removed and prevented.” In order to achieve this objective, the Communication announced the Commission’s plans to propose a European ‘Free flow of data’ initiative that would “tackle restrictions on the free movement of data for reasons other than the protection of personal data within the EU and unjustified restrictions on the location of data for storage or processing purposes.” Both the Commission’s earlier cloud policies and the current Digital Single Market strategy are therefore aligned on the need to identify and address unjustified data location restrictions. A much more delicate question is the identification of these restrictions, and above all the assessment of whether or not they are justified. It is precisely these questions that the present study aims to address: the identification of examples of barriers that hinder the free flow of data across the European Union, including the quantification of their impacts, and the definition of methodologies and frameworks that allow their accurate description, with a view of assessing their necessity, and thus their justification, in a Digital Single Market. Thus the main objectives of this study are to: a) Identify and analyse legal and non-legal barriers in Member States practices that hinder the free flow of data within the European Union, in order to contribute to the sustainable development of a Digital Single Market, and b) Quantify the impact of these barriers for private and public sector uses, as well as suppliers of cloud computing services by conducting a cost benefit analysis3. The Study Team has aimed to achieve these objectives through a step-by-step approach, undertaking the following tasks:
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Task 1: Elaborate a methodology to review and map compliance obligations in the 28 EU Member states
During the execution of this study, the Commission continued their work in the area, publishing amongst others its’ Communication on "Building a European data economy", Brussels, 10.1.2017, COM(2017) 9 final, accompanied by Commission staff working document on the free flow of data and emerging issues of the European data economy, Brussels, 10.1.2017, SWD(2017) 2 final.
