Luxembourg: 8 September 2010

The PSI Re-use Directive 2003/98/EC prohibits the existence of Exclusive Arrangements (EAs) and the transitional period for the phasing out EAs ended on the 31st December 2008.

To monitor compliance with the PSI Re-use Directive and to ensure fair market terms for the re-use of public sector information, the European Commission announced on the 10th December 2009 that exclusive arrangement studies were commissioned.

The purpose of the studies was to assess the position with respect to exclusive arrangements in a number of Member States, in particular to collect relevant information from the private and public sides of PSI markets (supply and demand) related to Article 11 of the Directive.

Javier Hernandez Ros, Head of the EC unit responsible for the PSI Re-use Directive in a blog post on exclusive arrangements commented:

“The PSI Directive stipulates that the re-use of PSI shall be open to all potential actors in the market. This means that public sector bodies are not allowed to grant exclusive rights for the re-use of PSI. There may be however exceptions, notably if the existence of such exclusive agreement is a must for re-use itself. In that case the exclusive agreement has to be transparent and made public, and the reasons for granting the exclusive right have to be regularly reviewed, at least every 3 years.”

Supporting information by the Commission on when Exclusive Agreements occur was published. The opening excerpt from this document states:

“The Directive 2003/98/EC on the re-use of public sector information provides that the reuse of information contained in publicly available documents shall be open to all potential actors in the market, even if one or more market players already exploit added value products based on this information. The necessary corollary to such obligation of overall openness is the prohibition that public sector bodies grant exclusive rights in their contracts /arrangements with third parties (Article 10.1). Moreover, existing exclusive arrangements had to be terminated at the end of the contract or in any case not later than 31 December 2008.”

All of the Member State studies have now been published by European Commission (EC) Information Society Directorate with the exception of the German one.

• Report – published 20th May 2010 Overiview
• Report – 5th March 2010 Overview
• Report – 20th May 2010 Overview
• Report - published 8th September 2010 Overview
• Report - published 8th September 2010 Overview
• Report - published 8th September 2010 Overview
• Report - published 8th September 2010 Overview
• Report – published 8th September 2010 Overview

-----

The European Commission announcement (8th September 2010) on the studies and the findings comments:

“The reports to identify the potential existence of Exclusive Agreements for Belgium, Austria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Poland, Spain, Italy and France have been finalised. Whilst most of the studies have yielded leads to potential Exclusive Agreements in Member States, overall the studies have found out that the number of potential Exclusive Agreements are very few in the EU, and that these are not a major obstacle hindering the full potential of PSI re-use in Europe. The studies also provide some insight into the current PSI developments in Member States and hint to those areas which may be preventing PSI re-use in each respective Member State.”

-----

• A complete list of the contractors commissioned by the EC to undertake the studies
• Complete documentation on the European Commission commissioned Exclusive arrangement studies is published on the European Public Sector Information PSI Library Reports page and the European Commission’s PSI Access and Re-use web portal.

Related News and Blogs

Exclusive Agreements: Belgium

Exclusive arrangements: Austria

Exclusive arrangements: Czech Republic

PSI Exclusive arrangement studies launched!

Exclusive agreements study: I hope we won't find too many!