Decision 2011/833 - 2011/833/EU: Commission Decision of 12 December 2011 on the reuse of Commission documents - Main contents

EN

Official Journal of the European Union

L 330/39

Europe 2020 sets out a vision of Europe’s social market economy for the 21st century. One of the priority themes in that context is ‘Smart growth: developing an economy based on knowledge and innovation’.

The new information and communication technologies have created unprecedented possibilities to aggregate and combine content from different sources.

Public sector information is an important source of potential growth of innovative online services through value-added products and services. Governments can stimulate content markets by making public sector information available on transparent, effective and non-discriminatory terms. For this reason, the Digital Agenda for Europe (1) singled out the reuse of public sector information as one of the key areas for action.

The Commission and the other Institutions are themselves holders of many documents of all kinds which could be reused in added-value information products and services and which could provide a useful content resource for companies and citizens alike.

The right to access Commission documents is regulated through Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 30 May 2001 regarding public access to European Parliament, Council and Commission documents (2).

Directive 2003/98/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council (3) sets minimum rules for the reuse of public sector information throughout the European Union. In its recitals it encourages Member States to go beyond these minimum rules and to adopt open data policies, allowing a broad use of documents held by public sector bodies.

The Commission has set an example to public administrations in making statistics, publications and the full corpus of Union law freely available online. This is a good basis to make further progress in ensuring the availability and reusability of data held by the institution.

Commission Decision 2006/291/EC, Euratom of 7 April 2006 on the reuse of Commission information (4) determines the conditions for the reuse of Commission documents.

In order to make the reuse regime of Commission documents more effective, the rules on the reuse of Commission documents should be adapted with a view to achieving a broader reuse of such documents.

A data portal as a single point of access to documents available for reuse should be set up. In addition, it is appropriate to include in the documents available for reuse the research information produced by the Joint Research Centre. A provision should be adopted to take into account the move towards machine-readable formats. An important improvement with respect to Decision 2006/291/EC, Euratom consists in making Commission documents generally available for reuse without the need for individual applications, through open reuse licences or simple disclaimers.

Decision 2006/291/EC, Euratom should therefore be replaced by this Decision.

An open reuse policy at the Commission will support new economic activity, lead to a wider use and spread of Union information, enhance the image of openness and transparency of the Institutions, and avoid unnecessary administrative burden for users and Commission services. In 2012, the Commission envisages exploring with other Union institutions and key Agencies to what extent they could adopt their own rules on...