Directive on Open Data and the Re-use of Public Sector Information
European Union · Regulation · European Commission
Our summary
This regulation establishes a unified framework for member states to make government and publicly funded data available for reuse, encompassing material from public bodies, state agencies, and funded organizations across the EU. It designates certain datasets with significant economic and societal value - such as geospatial, meteorological, and statistical information - that must be accessible at no cost in machine-readable formats. The directive also covers research data from public funding and data held by state-owned enterprises, aiming to foster transparency, fair competition, and innovation in data-driven services.
Written by the Index in our own words. It is not legal advice; the official text is the authority.
Inside this policy
Every section of this policy in order. Our notes summarise each one in plain language and do not quote the official text, which is the authority.
Drafted by the Index An automated summary of the official text, not yet reviewed by a person.Reviewed Checked by a person against the official text.
30 sections
Jump to a chapter
- Chapter I General provisions
- Chapter II Requests for re-use
- Chapter III Conditions for re-use
- Chapter IV Non-discrimination and fair trading
- Chapter V High-value datasets
- Chapter VI Final provisions
- Annex I List of thematic categories of high-value datasets, as referred to in Article 13(1)
- Annex II Repealed directives and implementation deadlines
- Annex III Correlation table
Chapter I General provisions
3 sections
This chapter establishes minimum rules for the re-use and practical arrangements facilitating the re-use of documents held by public sector bodies and certain public undertakings, as well as research data, in order to promote open data and drive innovation.
Article 1 Subject matter and scope
This Directive sets minimum rules for re-using papers in the possession of public sector bodies and certain public undertakings (those in particular sectors or providing public services), and research data under specified conditions, to promote open data and innovation; it excludes papers outside the public task, those with third-party intellectual property rights, papers restricted for security, confidentiality, or personal data protection, papers held by public broadcasters, cultural institutions, and secondary schools, and research papers from research organisations unless they are research data as defined. The Directive does not affect existing national or EU access regimes, personal data protection laws, or international intellectual property agreements, and prohibits public sector bodies from using database rights to prevent or restrict re-use beyond its limits.
Article 2 Definitions
Article 2 defines public sector body as the State and regional or local authorities, and bodies established for general-interest needs with public legal status, financed or supervised by public authorities; public undertaking as any undertaking in specified areas that public bodies directly or indirectly control through ownership, financial participation, or governance; and document as any content in any medium or part thereof. Re-use means using documents from public bodies or undertakings for purposes other than the original public purpose, excluding internal exchanges between public bodies or undertakings. The article also defines anonymisation, dynamic data, research data, high-value datasets, personal data, machine-readable and open format, formal open standard, reasonable return on investment as not exceeding 5 percentage points above the ECB's fixed interest rate, and third party.
Article 3 General principle
Member States must ensure that documents covered by the Directive are re-usable for either commercial or non-commercial purposes under Chapters III and IV, including documents in which libraries, museums or archives hold intellectual property rights and documents held by public undertakings, provided re-use is permitted.
Chapter II Requests for re-use
1 section
This chapter addresses the processing of requests for re-use of documents, including timelines and procedures for handling such requests.
Article 4 Processing of requests for re-use
Public sector bodies must process re-use requests electronically where feasible and deliver documents or finalise licences within reasonable timeframes consistent with access regimes, or if no rules exist, within 20 working days, extendable by 20 more days for complex requests. Negative decisions must cite grounds and identify rights holders; decisions must reference available remedies including impartial review. Public undertakings, educational establishments, research organisations and research funders are exempt from these requirements.
Chapter III Conditions for re-use
6 sections
This chapter establishes conditions for re-use covering available formats, charging principles, transparency, standard licences, practical arrangements, and requirements for research data.
Article 5 Available formats
Public sector bodies and undertakings must provide documents in pre-existing formats and languages, electronically where feasible, using open machine-readable formats compliant with formal standards, together with searchable metadata. Member States should encourage documents to be produced as open by design and default. Bodies need not create, adapt or extract documents if doing so would be disproportionate, nor continue producing specific document types for re-use purposes.
Article 6 Principles governing charging
Document re-use must generally be free, though organising bodies may recover direct costs for reproduction, distribution, and anonymisation. Libraries, museums, archives, and public undertakings plus revenue-generating public bodies are exempt and may charge based on transparent, verifiable criteria that do not exceed total documented expenses plus reasonable returns. High-value datasets and research data must always be free to users.
Article 7 Transparency
Public sector bodies must publish standard charges and their calculation basis online where feasible. For other charges, bodies must explain at the outset what factors affect pricing and, upon request, demonstrate how charges were calculated for a specific case. Bodies must also inform applicants about available remedies for disputed decisions.
Article 8 Standard licences
Conditions on document re-use must be objective, proportionate, non-discriminatory and justified by public interest, and must not unnecessarily limit re-use or distort competition. Member States shall provide standard digital licences that can be adapted and processed electronically, and encourage their use.
Article 9 Practical arrangements
Member States must establish systems to help users find available documents, such as metadata listings and portal sites accessible online in machine-readable format, and facilitate cross-language search where feasible. Member States and the Commission shall work together to simplify access through unified entry points and progressively publish accessible, machine-readable datasets from public bodies and Union institutions.
Article 10 Research data
Member States must adopt open access policies requiring public research organisations and funders to make publicly funded research data openly available by default, following FAIR principles and balancing intellectual property, data protection, and commercial concerns. Publicly available research data may be re-used commercially or non-commercially, provided pre-existing rights and legitimate business interests are respected.
Chapter IV Non-discrimination and fair trading
2 sections
Chapter IV establishes requirements for non-discriminatory treatment of re-use actors and restricts exclusive arrangements for document access.
Article 11 Non-discrimination
Conditions for document re-use must be uniform across equivalent re-use categories, including cross-border use. When public bodies use documents for commercial activity outside their public duties, they must apply the same pricing and terms to external users as to themselves.
Article 12 Exclusive arrangements
Market access for document re-use must remain open to all actors regardless of existing commercial products, and exclusive rights are prohibited unless necessary for public interest services, in which case they require three-yearly review and transparency requirements. Exclusivity for cultural digitisation is capped at ten years with public sector copies provided at no cost. Arrangements restricting availability must be published two months ahead and reviewed every three years.
Chapter V High-value datasets
2 sections
Chapter V defines high-value datasets by thematic category and establishes how they must be published and made available for re-use.
Article 13 Thematic categories of high-value datasets
Annex I lists thematic categories of high-value datasets. The Commission may adopt delegated acts to add new categories to reflect technological and market changes.
Article 14 Specific high-value datasets and arrangements for publication and re-use
Requires the Commission to list specific high-value datasets from categories in Annex I that must be available free of charge (subject to exceptions), machine-readable, provided via APIs and bulk downloads, on open standard licences; selection is based on potential for socioeconomic or environmental benefits, user benefits especially for SMEs, revenue generation, and dataset combination. Exemptions allow high-value datasets held by public undertakings to be charged where providing free access would distort competition, exempts libraries and museums from free availability requirements, and permits Member States to exempt public sector bodies required to generate revenue for up to two years following the implementing act.
Chapter VI Final provisions
7 sections
This chapter covers the delegation of powers to the Commission, committee procedures for adopting implementing acts, transposition deadlines for member states, requirements for a Commission evaluation, repeal of the prior directive, entry into force, and identification of addressees.
Article 15 Exercise of the delegation
Grants the Commission power to adopt delegated acts for a five-year term from 16 July 2019, with tacit extension unless opposed by the European Parliament or Council. The Commission must consult member state experts, notify both institutions of any adopted acts, and may be revoked by either institution at any time. Delegated acts take effect unless rejected within three months.
Article 16 Committee procedure
The European Commission receives assistance from a dedicated committee governing open data and information reuse from public bodies, which operates under the framework established by Regulation (EU) No 182/2011. The advisory procedures set out in Article 5 of that regulation apply to this committee's work.
Article 17 Transposition
Requires member states to adopt implementing laws, regulations and administrative provisions by 17 July 2021, with references to this Directive included and communication of such measures to the Commission. Member states must also send the Commission texts of national laws adopted in the field covered by the Directive.
Article 18 Commission evaluation
Requires the Commission to evaluate the Directive no sooner than 17 July 2025 and report findings to the European Parliament, Council and European Economic and Social Committee. The evaluation must assess increases in document re-use, impact of high-value datasets, charging principles, availability of application programming interfaces, interaction with data protection rules, and improvements to the internal market.
Article 19 Repeal
Repeals the prior directive on re-use of public sector information (Directive 2003/98/EC and its amendments) effective 17 July 2021, while preserving transposition obligations. References to the repealed Directive are construed as references to this Directive.
Article 20 Entry into force
Article 21 Addressees
This Directive applies to Member States. The text includes a list of references to related EU legal instruments on data protection, databases, environmental information, spatial data, transport systems, procurement, infrastructure protection, and network security. This part continues the list of references to related EU legal instruments, covering procurement law, website accessibility, electronic communications privacy, copyright, and the rules for Member States' control of Commission implementing powers.
Annex I List of thematic categories of high-value datasets, as referred to in Article 13(1)
Specifies six thematic categories of high-value datasets: geospatial, earth observation and environment, meteorological, statistics, companies and company ownership, and mobility.
Annex II Repealed directives and implementation deadlines
This annex lists the earlier directives that this directive replaces and specifies the deadlines by which member states had to transpose them into national law and when they took effect.
Annex III Correlation table
This annex provides a mapping between articles in the previous directive and corresponding articles in the current directive to show how provisions have been reorganized or renumbered.
Controls
What this policy requires, forbids, grants or penalises, one control at a time and in our own words. Each control links to the official text, which is the authority. This is not legal advice.
Drafted by the Index Drafted automatically from the official text, not yet reviewed by a person.Reviewed Checked by a person against the official text.
Themes covered 8 of 35
Choose a theme to see only its controls. About the themes
Risk and scope 1 of 4
- Risk classification, not covered
- Risk management system, not covered
- Impact assessment, not covered
Data and privacy 2 of 4
- Data subject rights and consent, not covered
- Cross-border data transfer, not covered
Transparency and records 2 of 4
- Labelling of synthetic content, not covered
- Technical documentation, not covered
Technical safeguards 0 of 4
- Human oversight, not covered
- Accuracy, robustness and cybersecurity, not covered
- Bias and non-discrimination, not covered
- Testing and evaluation, not covered
Assurance and lifecycle 1 of 4
- Conformity assessment and certification, not covered
- Registration and notification, not covered
- Incident and breach reporting, not covered
Rights and protected groups 1 of 4
- Automated decision-making rights, not covered
- Children and vulnerable groups, not covered
- Biometric identification and surveillance, not covered
Roles and organisation 1 of 6
- Supply chain and provider-deployer duties, not covered
- General purpose and foundation models, not covered
- Training and AI literacy, not covered
- Public sector use and procurement, not covered
- Innovation support and sandboxes, not covered
Enforcement and sectors 0 of 5
- Enforcement, penalties and regulators, not covered
- Sector rules: health, not covered
- Sector rules: finance and insurance, not covered
- Sector rules: employment, not covered
- Sector rules: education, not covered
The full list of controls could not be loaded, so only the first 40 are shown.
Article 1 1 control
- ObligationApplies to: Public authorityDrafted by the Index
This regulation sets minimum rules for the re-use of documents held by public sector bodies, public undertakings in specified sectors, and research data to promote open data and innovation.
Article 3 1 control
- ObligationApplies to: Public authorityDrafted by the Index
Member States must ensure that documents covered by this Directive are available for re-use for both commercial and non-commercial purposes, including documents in which libraries, museums or archives hold intellectual property rights and documents held by public undertakings where re-use is permitted.
Article 4 4 controls
- ObligationApplies to: Public authorityDrafted by the Index
Public sector bodies must process re-use requests electronically where feasible and deliver documents or finalise licences within reasonable timeframes consistent with access regimes.
- ObligationApplies to: Public authorityDrafted by the Index
Where no time limits exist, public sector bodies must process requests and deliver documents or finalise licences within 20 working days, extendable by a further 20 working days for extensive or complex requests, with notice to the applicant within three weeks if extension is needed.
- ObligationApplies to: Public authorityDrafted by the Index
Public sector bodies must communicate the grounds for refusal in negative decisions and identify the rightsholder or licensor where known, except that libraries, museums and archives are not required to include such a reference.
- ObligationApplies to: Public authorityDrafted by the Index
Any decision on re-use must include a reference to means of redress available to the applicant, which shall include review by an impartial body with appropriate expertise whose decisions are binding on the public sector body.
Article 5 5 controls
- ObligationApplies to: ProviderDrafted by the Index
Public sector bodies and undertakings must make documents available in their original or any pre-existing format and language, using open and machine-readable formats that comply with formal standards, together with metadata.
- ObligationApplies to: Public authorityDrafted by the Index
Member States should encourage public sector bodies and undertakings to produce and publish documents in a way that is open from the outset as standard practice.
- Applies to: ProviderDrafted by the Index
Public sector bodies are not obligated to create, modify, or extract documents to meet these requirements if the effort would be disproportionate beyond a routine task.
- Applies to: ProviderDrafted by the Index
Public sector bodies do not need to maintain ongoing production and storage of specific document types merely to support re-use by organisations.
- ObligationApplies to: ProviderDrafted by the Index
Public sector bodies must release dynamic data for re-use as soon as they are collected, using application programming interfaces and bulk downloads where feasible.
Article 7 3 controls
- ObligationApplies to: ProviderDrafted by the Index
Public sector bodies must pre-establish and publish standard charges for document re-use, applicable conditions and calculation basis by electronic means where feasible and appropriate.
- ObligationApplies to: ProviderDrafted by the Index
Where charges vary, public sector bodies must indicate the factors affecting the calculation at the outset and explain upon request how charges were calculated for a specific re-use request.
- ObligationApplies to: ProviderDrafted by the Index
Public sector bodies must inform applicants for document re-use of available remedies relating to decisions or practices affecting them.
Article 8 2 controls
- ObligationApplies to: ProviderDrafted by the Index
Conditions on document re-use must be objective, proportionate, non-discriminatory and justified by a public interest objective, and must not unnecessarily limit re-use or distort competition.
- ObligationApplies to: Public authorityDrafted by the Index
Member States must ensure standard licences for public sector document re-use are available in digital format and processable electronically, and should encourage their use.
Article 9 4 controls
- ObligationApplies to: Public authorityDrafted by the Index
Member States must establish systems such as metadata listings and online portal sites in machine-readable format to help users locate documents available for re-use.
- ObligationApplies to: Public authorityDrafted by the Index
Member States should facilitate cross-language searching for documents, particularly through metadata collection at the Union level.
- ObligationApplies to: Public authorityDrafted by the Index
Member States should encourage public bodies to establish systems that support the long-term preservation of documents available for re-use.
- ObligationApplies to: Public authorityDrafted by the Index
Member States and the Commission must collaborate to reduce barriers to accessing datasets, including by creating unified access points and progressively releasing machine-readable datasets from public bodies and Union institutions.
Article 10 3 controls
- ObligationApplies to: Public authorityDrafted by the Index
Member States must adopt policies requiring that publicly funded research data be made openly available by default, following the FAIR principles and balancing intellectual property, data protection and commercial concerns.
- ObligationApplies to: ProviderDrafted by the Index
Research performing organisations and research funding organisations must implement the open access policies adopted by Member States.
- Applies to: AnyoneDrafted by the Index
Publicly funded research data that has been made publicly available may be re-used for commercial or non-commercial purposes, provided legitimate commercial interests and pre-existing intellectual property rights are respected.
Article 11 2 controls
- ObligationApplies to: ProviderDrafted by the Index
Conditions for re-using documents must be identical for comparable categories of re-use, including re-use across borders.
- ObligationApplies to: Public authorityDrafted by the Index
When a public body re-uses documents for commercial activities outside its public duties, it must apply the same pricing and conditions to external users as to itself.
Article 12 6 controls
- ProhibitionApplies to: Public authorityDrafted by the Index
Document re-use must remain accessible to all market actors, and contracts or arrangements between public bodies and third parties must not grant exclusive rights to re-use documents.
- ObligationApplies to: Public authorityDrafted by the Index
Where an exclusive right is granted to provide a public interest service, its justification must be reviewed regularly and at least every three years.
- ObligationApplies to: Public authorityDeadline was Drafted by the Index
Exclusive arrangements established after 16 July 2019 must be published online at least two months before taking effect, and their final terms must be transparent and publicly available.
- ObligationApplies to: Public authorityDrafted by the Index
Exclusive rights for digitising cultural resources must generally not exceed ten years; if longer, the duration must be reviewed in the eleventh year and every seven years thereafter.
- ObligationApplies to: Public authorityDrafted by the Index
Exclusive arrangements for digitising cultural resources must be transparent and publicly disclosed, and a free copy of the digitised materials must be provided to the public body for re-use once exclusivity ends.
- ObligationApplies to: Public authorityDrafted by the Index
Arrangements that restrict document re-use availability to third parties without formally granting exclusivity must be published online at least two months before taking effect and reviewed regularly and at least every three years.
Article 15 2 controls
- Applies to: Public authorityDeadline was Drafted by the Index
The Commission holds delegated authority to adopt acts amending high-value dataset categories for a five-year period from 16 July 2019, with tacit renewal unless opposed by the European Parliament or Council.
- RightApplies to: Public authorityDrafted by the Index
The European Parliament or Council may revoke the Commission's delegated power at any time.
Article 16 1 control
- ObligationApplies to: Public authorityDrafted by the Index
A committee on open data and public sector information reuse shall assist the Commission and operate under the advisory procedure framework established in Regulation (EU) No 182/2011.
Article 17 3 controls
- ObligationApplies to: Public authorityDeadline was Drafted by the Index
Member states must enact the laws and regulations needed to implement this Directive and inform the Commission of them.
- ObligationApplies to: Public authorityDrafted by the Index
Member states must ensure that their implementing measures cite this Directive or are accompanied by a citation when officially published.
- ObligationApplies to: Public authorityDrafted by the Index
Member states must include a statement explaining that references to the repealed Directive in existing national law shall be read as references to this Directive.
Article 18 3 controls
- ObligationApplies to: Public authorityDeadline was Drafted by the Index
The Commission must evaluate this Directive no sooner than 17 July 2025 and submit a report on findings to the European Parliament, Council and European Economic and Social Committee.
- ObligationApplies to: Public authorityDrafted by the Index
Member States must provide the Commission with information needed to prepare the evaluation report.
- ObligationApplies to: Public authorityDrafted by the Index
The Commission's evaluation must assess increases in public sector document re-use, especially by SMEs, impact of high-value datasets, effects of charging principles, availability and use of application programming interfaces, interaction with data protection rules, and improvements to the internal market.
Change history
No changes recorded since we began monitoring this policy.