Common European Data Space for Cultural Heritage: Is the EU Taking the “High Road” from “A Single Access Point” to “A Single Market for Data” for Digital Cultural Content?

The Common European Data Space (CEDS), currently comprising fourteen sector- and domain-specific data spaces, was launched by the European Commission (EC) in 2018 in the context of the European Strategy for Data. The CEDS is devised to catalyse the European Union’s transformation into a competitive and digitally sovereign market power informed and governed by a robust legislative framework that would facilitate the cross-border and cross-sectoral flow and reuse of multiple types of data, which are collected and held by public-sector entities, within a “single market for data”. Despite their alignment with the overarching aims and objectives of the CEDS project, the Open Data Directive (ODD) and Data Governance Act (DGA) have limited impact on the deployment of the Common European Data Space for Cultural Heritage (CHDS), which constitutes one of the data spaces within the CEDS. This paper investigates the legal obstacles to the successful deployment of the CHDS, including the interplay of the ODD and DGA with other legislative frameworks essential to the realisation of the CHDS (i.e. cultural heritage law and copyright law). The paper suggests that this conundrum stems from the fact that the CHDS leans toward another landmark initiative of the EC: the Europeana platform, which established a “single access point” to cultural heritage assets. Considering that an implementing act for the deployment of the CHDS is yet to be adopted by the EC, the paper provides normative solutions to tackle the legal and policy problems hampering the operationalisation of the CHDS.