Austria: Exclusive Arrangements study

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Posted by ChrisCorbin on 19 May 2010

Summary

Date

Action

31.12.03

Directive 2003/98/EC enters into force in the European Union

1.07.05

Directive 2003/98/EC enters into force in Member States

13.09.07

Commission notifies Austria has transposed

31.12.08

Existing exclusive arrangements must be phased out

10.12.09

Commission announces launch of study

14.04.10

Commission receives study report

20.05.10

Commission makes study public

Elapsed time since notice first given: 76+ months approximately

Elapsed time since transposition (Austria): 33+ months approximately

Transparency: Poor (Austria), Commission (Moderate)

PSI policy implementation: Poor

The Austrian study

The Executive Summary of the report titled: PSI: Identification of potential Exclusive Agreements –Austria states:

“This Report provides a detailed overview of the activities we carried out and the results of the study on the potential existence of exclusive arrangements (EAs) between Austrian public sector bodies (PSBs) and re-users (Re-users) in the context of exploitation of public sector information (PSI).

The research has been carried out between November 25, 2009 and February 3, 2010 under 137 Austrian PSBs and their directorates and agencies and over 90 Re-users regarding the most valuable PSI domains (business infor-mation, geographic information, legal information, meteorological information, social statistical information and transport information). It has yielded 10 leads to potential EAs, largely based on reports from Re-users.

However, having confronted the PSBs involved with these leads and based on an assessment of their subsequent responses, we conclude that none of the 10 potential leads seems to qualify as an EA in the sense of article 11 of the PSI Directive. Nevertheless, the leads show potential issues regarding the re-use of PSI in different legal areas, which we will mention in this report.

The most prominent re-use issues reported in the leads are found in the PSI domains of meteorological information, business information (in particular com-pany register data) and, to a lesser extent, social data information.1

A side benefit of this study has been that it has allowed us to raise further awareness on the PSI Directive and enhance the understanding thereof, both at the level of the PSBs and the Re-users.

Finally, as the Austrian administrative structure is complicated due to its federal structure, the help of the Federal Ministry of Economy, Family and Youth (Bun-desministerium für Wirtschaft, Familie und Jugend) was very useful, where it has contributed to reach out to all administrative levels within the Austrian government.

The work on this study has been closed on Feb. 3. 2010.

1 A large part of the data reflect input received from the respondents approached during this study and al-though we have done our best to optimize the quantity and quality of the responses we can not take any re-sponsibility for the ultimate correctness of these data provided.”

Report references

Title: Study “PSI: Identification of potential Exclusive Agreements –Austria” Final Report

Version: 1.

Authors: Preslmayr Rechtsanwälte OG, Dr. Rainer Knyrim, Attorney at law

Date: 5 March 2010

Pages: 36

Contents:

1. Executive summary

2. Introduction

3. Background, aim and approach of the study

3.1. Background

3.2. Aim and approach