The November 2015 initiative of the free movement of data, introduced as a major policy priority for the European Commission and of the Digital Single Market, tends to reduce the difficulties resulting from the ownership and access to non-personal data.

To encourage the free flow of data and promote the sharing of digital information, the priority is to develop a data economy by harmonising Community rules.

In this context, on 13 September 2017 the European Commission filed a regulation proposal on the free movement of non-personal data.

In the proposal, the Commission introduces a new principle consisting of abolishing the requirements related to localisation of data while guaranteeing competent authorities rights to data access for regulatory control purposes. The aim of this draff regulation is to remove the obstacles to the free flow of data in the EU for companies, public administrations and individuals.

The Commission thus proposes to do away with unjustified or disproportionate national rules that prevent companies from choosing the place for stocking or processing their data, and encourages the establishment of self-regulatory codes of conduct aimed at facilitating the change of a cloud service provider and, for example, informing users of the conditions under which they can portablize their data outside of their own data processing environment (the principle of portability was established in Regulation 216/679 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data).