Council and Parliament strike a deal for more efficient digital public services across the EU
With a view to creating a network of interconnected digital public administrations and accelerating the digital transformation of Europe’s public sector.
The Council presidency and the European Parliament negotiators reached a provisional agreement on the proposed legislation regarding measures on a high level of public sector interoperability across the EU (Interoperable Europe act).
Today’s agreement advances our commitment towards the EU’s digital transformation. The new law will enable public administrations across Europe to cooperate more effectively, thus saving time and costs for our citizens and businesses.
Nadia Calviño, acting Spanish first vice-president and minister for economy and digitalisation
Main objectives of the regulation
The regulation aims to set up a new cooperation framework for EU public administrations to ensure the seamless delivery of public services across borders, and to provide for support measures promoting innovation and enhancing skills and knowledge exchange.
The new law will establish an interoperability governance structure with a view to creating an ecosystem of shared interoperability solutions for the EU’s public sector. This way, public administrations in the EU can contribute to and re-use such solutions, innovate together and create added value.
Main elements retained from the Commission’s proposal
The provisional agreement maintains the general thrust of the Commission’s proposal, namely as regards:
- rules ensuring a structured EU cooperation where public administrations come together in the framework of projects co-owned by member states, as well as regions and cities
- a multi-level governance framework steered by the ‘Interoperable Europe Board’
- the sharing and reuse of interoperability solutions, powered by a one-stop-shop for solutions and community cooperation (‘Interoperable Europe portal’) and supported by measures to promote innovation, and enhance skills and knowledge exchange
The co-legislators’ amendments
The co-legislators amended various parts of the Commission’s proposal. The main changes include:
- a clearer definition of the scope of the proposed legislation, including the concept and definition of ‘trans-European digital public services’
- clarifications concerning the objectives and the conditions of the mandatory interoperability assessment with a view to complying with the principle of proportionality to avoid overburdening national and local administrations
- consistency with the provisions of the artificial intelligence act (AIA) and of the general data protection regulation (GDPR), with regard to the establishment of and participation to interoperability regulatory sandboxes
- a stronger role for the Interoperable Europe Board, which stands at the core of the new governance structure set up by the regulation
Next steps
Following today’s provisional agreement, technical level teams will fine-tune the regulation this week.
Once this work has been concluded, the text of the full agreement will need to be confirmed by both institutions and undergo legal-linguistic revision before formal adoption by the co-legislators.
Background
In the past years, digital government and data experts have developed wide-ranging common interoperability cooperation practices based on the current European Interoperability Framework (EIF). The EIF is Europe’s widely recognised conceptual model for interoperability. However, recent evaluations have exposed serious limitations of this entirely voluntary cooperation approach.
EU member states have increasingly stressed the need to strengthen European interoperability cooperation. Among others, the ministerial declarations signed in 2017 in Tallinn and 2020 in Berlin attest to this necessity. With a view to addressing these needs, the Commission adopted the proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council laying down measures for a high level of public sector interoperability across the Union (‘Interoperable Europe Act’) on 18 November 2022. On 2 June 2023, the TTE (Telecommunications) Council took note of a progress report on this file and on 6 October 2023, member states’ representatives (Coreper) agreed on a mandate allowing the presidency to start negotiations with the European Parliament. A first trilogue was held on 10 October 2023.