Public Sector Information :: Facilitating Re-use :: Exclusive Agreements
Exclusive Agreements
The PSI Directive forbids, as a general rule, the existence of exclusive agreements (EAs) and the transitional period laid down in the Directive for existing exclusive agreements ended on 31 December 2008. According to the terms of the directive "…where an exclusive right is necessary for the provision of a service in the public interest, the validity of the reason for granting such an exclusive right shall be subject to regular review, and shall, in any event, be reviewed every three years". The exclusive arrangements established after the entry into force of this Directive shall be transparent and made public"; furthermore, "Existing exclusive arrangements that do not qualify for the exception under paragraph 2 (above) shall be terminated at the end of the contract or in any case not later than 31 December 2008." Supporting information by the Commission on when Exclusive Agreements occur may be found here.
Exclusive agreements (EA) between public sector bodies and private players have already been phased out in several Member States before the 31st December 2008 deadline, in application of the Directive. Examples of EAs that have been terminated include the Dutch car register and the Swedish population register. However, so far, only two Member States – the Netherlands and the UK (see the Netherlands and UK (OPSI) reports) have taken action to identify possible EAs within the public sector bodies in their respective countries, before the 31st December 2008 deadline. Both assessments have indeed identified the existence of EAs and their specific nature. No other Member States have taken such a systematic approach to identifying and phasing out these agreements. Sweden is currently undertaking this exercise in 2010.
In accordance with the Communication (COM/2009/0212 final) on the application on Re-use of Public Sector Information – Review of Directive 2003/98/EC – the Commission launched an exercise for assessing the existence of possible EAs concluded by Public Sector Bodies within certain Member States. The purpose of this exercise, is to collect relevant information from the public and the private side of the PSI markets (Supply and Demand) on the potential existence of Exclusive Agreements, in the light of Article 11 of the Directive.
A first set of Member States is covered by the first phase of this project (France, Italy, Spain, etc. A list of the awarded economic operators commissioned to undertake the analysis may be found here.
Exclusive Agreements study – results
The studies 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 some 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 one of the major obstacles 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. The Final reports per Member State analysed can be found here: