EN    EN EN 
 
EN    EN  COMMISSION OF THE E UROPEAN COMMUNITIES 
Brussels, 7.5.2009 
SEC(2009) 597 
  
COMMISSION STAFF WORKING DOCUMENT 
 
Accompanying document to the 
COMMUNICATION FROM THE CO MMISSION TO THE EUROPEAN 
PARLIAMENT, THE COUNCIL, THE EUROPEAN ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL 
COMMITTEE AND THE COMMI TTEE OF THE REGIONS 
  
on the re-use of Public Sector Information 
 
– Review of Directive 2003/98/EC – 
[COM(2009) 212 final] 
 
EN 2   EN COMMISSION STAFF WORKING DOCUMENT 
 
Accompanying document to the 
COMMUNICATION FROM THE CO MMISSION TO THE EUROPEAN 
PARLIAMENT, THE COUNCIL, THE EUROPEAN ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL 
COMMITTEE AND THE COMMI TTEE OF THE REGIONS 
  
on the re-use of Public Sector Information 
 
– Review of Directive 2003/98/EC – 
 
EN 3   EN 1. Introduction................................................................................................................ .. 5 
2. Public Sector Information ............................................................................................ 5 2.1. Economic aspects......................................................................................................... 5  
2.2. PSI and Web 2.0........................................................................................................... 9 
2.3. PSI as a driver of innovation and sustainable growth................................................ 10 3. The Public Sector Information (PSI) Directive.......................................................... 11 3.1. Key provisions ........................................................................................................... 1 1 
3.1.1. Clear procedures to deal with requests for re-use ...................................................... 12 3.1.2. Upper limit for charging............................................................................................. 12 3.1.3. Transparency of conditions applicable  to re-use and means of redress..................... 12 
3.1.4. Obligation to avoid discrimination between market players in the conditions for re-
use ............................................................................................................................ .. 12 
3.1.5. Prohibition of exclusive arrangements, w ith the exception of the exclusive rights 
necessary for the provision of a se rvice in the pub lic interest ................................... 12 
4. Transposition of the Directive.................................................................................... 13 4.1. Different approaches to implementation.................................................................... 13 4.2. Delays in implementation, revised laws..................................................................... 13 
4.3. Complaints, infringement procedures ........................................................................ 13 
5. Results of Member State and stakeholder public consultation on the review of the 
Directive..................................................................................................................... 1 4 
5.1. Results of the Member State consulta tion on the review of the Directive................. 14 
5.2. Results of stakeholder consultation on the review of the Directive........................... 15 
6. Evaluation of the scope and impact of the Directive ................................................. 17 6.1. Impact of the Directive............................................................................................... 17 6.1.1. Increase in re-use of PSI ............................................................................................ 17 6.1.2. Effects of the principles  applied to charging.............................................................. 19 
6.2. Scope of the Directive................................................................................................ 21 6.2.1. Cultural institutions................................................................................................... . 21 
6.2.2. Educational institutions.............................................................................................. 22  
6.2.3. Public service broa dcasting institutions..................................................................... 23 
6.3. Re-use of Commission information ........................................................................... 23 6.3.1. Identify, publish, promote – strategy ......................................................................... 23 
 
EN 4   EN 6.3.2. Examples of re-use of Commission information ....................................................... 24 
7. Follow-up to implementation..................................................................................... 25 7.1. National PSI bodies/dispute settlement bodies .......................................................... 25 7.2. Licensing policy......................................................................................................... 2 6 
7.3. Exclusive deals/arrangements .................................................................................... 26 7.4. Public task ............................................................................................................... ... 27 
7.5. Cooperation PSIH – Re-users .................................................................................... 28 7.6. Technological issues .................................................................................................. 29 8. Overview of relevant European and international PSI-related initiatives.................. 30 
8.1. Bilateral contacts, PSI expert group........................................................................... 30 
8.2. Awareness-raising actions and studies under the eContentplus/CIP programmes .... 30 
8.3. Associated Community initiatives ............................................................................. 31 8.3.1. SEIS – Shared Environmental Information System................................................... 31 8.3.2. INSPIRE Directive..................................................................................................... 31  
8.4. International activities (OECD) ................................................................................. 32 
 
EN 5   EN 1. I NTRODUCTION  
This staff working paper accompanies the Communication from th e Commission to the 
European Parliament, the Council, the Eur opean Economic and Social Committee and the 
Committee of the Regions on the Re-use of Public  Sector Information – Review of Directive 
2003/98/EC–. 
Its aim is to present facts, evidence and examples relating to the re-use of PSI that are relevant 
to the issues dealt with in the Communication. 
The Communication and this sta ff working paper have greatly benefited from consultation 
and interaction with the relevant stakeholders . A public online consultation on the review of 
the Directive was held from May to Septembe r 2008. In addition, a similar consultation on the 
review of the Directive was held for EU Member States. Section 5 presents the results of these 
consultations. A large number of workshops on PSI were held in EU Member States in 2007 
and 2008, which included stakeholder particip ation (in particular private geographical 
information and meteorological firms, commercia l publishers and industry associations). In 
parallel, a considerable number of bilateral contacts were taken up with publishers, private 
firms, government agencies and commercial associations. 
2. P UBLIC SECTOR INFORMATION  
Public authorities produce, collect and hold vast amounts of public sector information. PSI is 
considered to be  the single largest source of information in Europe , covering widely 
diverging sectors and expanding across all areas of government. For example, financial, 
business information and statistics are regular ly collected by public sector organisations. 
Company registers are maintained by the public sector. Legal information and administrative 
information are by their specific nature pr ime examples of public sector information. 
Geographical information is relevant to transpor t, tourism and many othe r uses and is widely 
produced by public sector agencies. 
The tools of the information society make it possible for a subs tantial amount of the 
information produced by the public  sector to be potentially re -used in the market place. PSI is 
behind  the development of new added-value services, products and applications  created 
by private companies by combining data from different sources. 
2.1. Economic aspects 
Recent studies indicate that the economic valu e of PSI is substantia l, although measuring its 
value accurately is not a st raightforward task. The MEPSIR study (2006) contracted by the 
Commission, for example, puts the overall market size for the re-use of PSI in the 
European Union at €27 billion.1 Other recent figures available from the UK Office of Fair 
Trading (OFT) – The commercial use of public information (CUPI) Report2 – indicate that the 
contribution of PSI to the UK economy alone reached €730 million in 2006 .  
                                                 
1 http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/po licy/psi/docs/pdfs/mepsir/final_report.pdf . 
2 http://www.opsi.gov.uk/a dvice/poi/oft-cupi.pdf . 
 
EN 6   EN The 2008 Capgemini “Information Management Report”,3 of which PSI can be considered to 
be an important subset, noted that the failure to exploit information assets,  i.e. the values 
and behaviours associated with how they co llect, use, manage and share information, was 
costing the UK private and public sectors £46 billion and £21 billion respectively.  
Figures on the main economic mark ets re-using PSI also make fo r very illuminating reading. 
The number and volume of new services associated with Geographical Information (GI)  is 
skyrocketing. The demand for maps, navigation services and location-based services is 
increasing by the day. The European Cartographic market , a sub-set of the GI market, was 
already valued , according to industry sources, at €1.5 billion  in 2005.4 The study on 
“Prospects for Business Models of German Companies in the European and Global Geo-information Market” calculat ed that the value of the geo-information market in Germany in 
2007 was €1.5 billion
5 and that it has grown by a pproximately 50% since 2000. 
The digital maps/satellite naviga tion industries have experienced substantial changes in recent 
years, and access to and re-use of cartographic and cadastral information has been vital to the 
development of their business. It is estimat ed that 35 million porta ble navigation devices 
(PNDs) were sold in 2007, twice as many as in 2006, making personal navigation one of the 
fastest-growing areas in consumer electronics.6 The interest in and value of this industry was 
highlighted when Nokia,  the world’s largest mobile phone maker acquired Navteq , the 
world’s biggest maker of digital maps, for €5.7 billion in 2007 . Similarly, TomTom, a leading 
PND manufacturer from the Ne therlands, recently bought Tele Atlas, the next biggest 
mapmaker, for €1.8 billion. 
Nokia is manufacturing phones that can pick up signals from global positioning system (GPS) 
satellites, and is alr eady including supplementary – loca tion-based – services, which are 
expected to make up the main share of future re venues. Drivers, for example, can subscribe to 
real-time traffic information that allow them to anticipate traffic jams or  check fuel prices at 
the petrol stations that app ear on their maps. Nokia and TomTom have made moves to own 
the maps they use so as to be in control of the revenues generated by location-based services.  
Infoterra Group 
Infoterra Group is a wholly-owned subsidiary of EADS Astrium, with subsidiaries in France, 
Germany, Hungary, Spain and the United Kingdom . It delivers up-to-date, accurate and 
timely geo-information data and specialised GI S tools, which are key elements for improved 
predictions and better risk-bas ed decisions for flood risk ma nagement, assets mapping and 
reconstruction planning. Many of their products are based on the re-use of public data from 
various countries aggregated with priv ate data sources and then refined.  
In addition to big companies, several SMEs ha ve emerged in this sector, displaying a high 
degree of dynamism and growth and creating and developing niche markets. Intelligent 
Addressing is a good example. 
                                                 
3 http://www.harnessinginformation.com/newsevents.php . 
4 EuroGeographics 2006 Report. Unpublished. 
5 http://www.micus.de/pdf/Press_Release-GIW-study.pdf . 
6 The Economist. “Satellite navigation” Oct 4th 2007. 
 
EN 7   EN  
Intelligent Addressing 
Intelligent Addressing Ltd has become an in formation management specialist and data 
provider, focusing on land and property data, speci fically addressing spatial referencing in the 
UK, whereby accessing and re-using addresses is a key data search attribute. The company 
was set up in 1999, and has grown substantially in  recent years, deve loping highly specific 
added value products such as cleansing, matchi ng and de-duplicating la rge address datasets 
for clients in a wide range of sectors, includ ing real estate agencies, financial services 
providers, insurance and central government.  
These growth trends in the GI sector were c onfirmed in the Assessment of the re-use of PSI 
undertaken on behalf of the Commission, where 46% of GI public sector hol ders reported that 
their total income had increased since 2002, and similarly 66% of GI re-users (private firms) 
reported that their income had grown in recent years. 
The online European market for legal information  (which includes legal, tax and regulatory 
information) was valued at €730 million,7 including a 14% increase in 2005. The 
Groupement Français de l’Industrie de l’Information (GFII) reported that the French legal 
information  market was worth €246 million,8 an increase of 17% compared to 2007. The 
projected growth of this market for th e coming 5 years is set at 7% per annum.9 
El Derecho Editores 
The Spanish Council of the Judiciary (CENDOJ), which has the task to care for the 
publication of case law, implements an open an d transparent re-use pol icy, which has resulted 
in the number of re-users (legal  information publishers) substantially increasing to more than 
25 today. The number of Supreme Court case judg ments delivered for re-use almost doubled 
from 2002 to 2006, to 1.25 million in 2006. El Der echo Editores, a relatively small publisher 
in 2001, has been particularly innovative sin ce then, producing new hi ghly pioneering legal 
information products appealing to law firms, judges and prosecutors and has become a major 
player in the Spanish legal informati on market, with sales of €20 million in 2007.  
In the area of business information , in which much raw data is gathered from public sources, 
such as company registries, the press and the courts, the number of ne w products and services 
being created and delivered on-line is substan tial and increasing. For example, the business 
information market comprises business intell igence services, business statistics, debt 
collection services, and business and credit ra ting information, which are so important for 
conducting business. Febis , the European Federation of Business Information Services, 
estimated in 2007 that the business information market in Europe was worth €1.5 
million.10  
Key players in this market are big companies such as Creditreform from Germany and 
Bisnode AB from Sweden, but small firms are also emerging. 
                                                 
7 The European Online Information Market 2006, Report. IRN Research. May 2006.  
8 GFII. L’information électronique professionnelle en  France: Le marché en 2007 et les tendances. 
9 Wolters Kluwer Ltd estimate. The Future of the Information Industry Conference. August 2006.  
10 http://www.febis.org/cadre.asp . 
 
EN 8   EN Bisnode AB 
Bisnode AB is one of Europe’s leading provi ders of digital business information, including 
credit reports, company and consumer inform ation, direct marketing tools and market 
information for the general business-to-busin ess market. Bisnode has companies in 19 
countries and 3 200 employees (2007). Tur nover last year was 4.055 million SKR (580 
million SKR in profit). A large part of th e information that Bisnode uses to produce 
information services originat es from the public sector.  
Access to and re-use of meteorological information has a direct impact on the economic 
activity of private firms, as many industries, pa rticularly agriculture, transport, tourism and 
energy, are affected by w eather-related events.11 Variations in temperature – even small ones 
– can have long-lasting effects on the operational results of certai n industries. Th e overall size 
of the market in Europe for weather and climatological services  (including aviation) in 
2006 was estimated to be around €530m.12 
Businesses and individuals greatly value accurate  weather forecasts as a means of mitigating 
the effects of bad weather. This requires ad  hoc services beyond those provided by National 
Met Offices. Many big companies and projects, such  as the media, airlines, large construction 
companies, energy supply programmes, large tran sport networks and so forth, require timely, 
immediate and very detailed meteorological inform ation, which is crucial for their businesses. 
This is provided through the combination of synoptic observations, satellite images or radar data gathered from different sources a pplying embedded information technology and 
forecasting analysis provided by private weathe r firms to produce tailor specific added value 
solutions. 
Foreca 
Foreca is a privately-owned, full-scale weather service company based in Finland, which was 
established in 1996. It is seen as something of a pioneer in weather se rvices for the digital 
media. It is at the forefront in providing wire less weather services. It  recently launched a new 
free mobile internet weather service, provid ing weather information for more than 80 000 
locations around the world. The service includes  current conditions as well as weather 
forecasts up to seven days. It also contains animated maps, e.g. sate llite data covering the 
whole world and rain radar images for selected territories  
In addition, access to and re-use of reliable meteorological information is of paramount 
importance to the weather risk/insurance management industry , where users such as 
energy companies or retailers can limit any po tential losses due to unforeseen temperature 
fluctuations. The notional value of contra cts in this market is put at around $32 billion  in the 
US,13 whereas the market in Europe is only in its infancy.14 
In the US, NBC Universal unit, part of Genera l Electric, agreed to buy The Weather Channel 
in a deal believed to be worth around $3.5 billion. This type of deal highlights the extent to 
                                                 
11 According to the U.S. Department of Energy, an estimated 25% of a country’s GNP. 
12 Towards a stronger European market in applied meteorology. Dr R. E. W. Pettifer. Meteorological 
Applications. Volume 15, Issue 2, pp. 305-312. 
13 The Economist. “Something for a rainy day”, 12 July 12 2008. 
14 “Avec la creation de Metnext la meteo s’invite  dans l’economie”. Le Monde, 12 May 2007. 
 
EN 9   EN which citizens and businesses appreciate a high qual ity forecast, amid the plethora of internet 
websites giving current and future weather conditions. 
The above figures illustrate that the impact an d value of PSI is real and substantial, and 
confirm the growth potential of these markets . These growth trends were confirmed in the 
Assessment of the re-use of PSI undertaken on behalf of the Commission, which focused on 
three main PSI sectors: geographical and mete orological information, which will be further 
developed in Section 4. 
2.2. PSI and Web 2.0  
People are making full use of soci al network tools, such as us er-created content, wikis, 
mashups and blogs, to combine content from different sources (including PSI) to produce 
Web 2.0 applications. Netmums.com has 350 00015 users and provides information on 
parenting; other examples include Th eyworkforyou.com, Chicagocrime.org and 
Planningalerts.com. These applications have prov en social benefits and public value. Another 
example is the farm subsidy site16 which tracks how the EU Co mmon Agricultural Policy 
(CAP) is spent. 
The rapid growth of these emerging types of activities are beginning to represent 
opportunities for economic growth, whereby “ the wide availability of public data for re-use 
seems to be an important enabling fact or for web 2.0 application to flourish17”.  
Upmystreet.com 
UpMyStreet has become one of most popular ho me and local informa tion internet service 
providers in the UK. It provides users with a large range of searchable local information based 
on postcodes, including property prices, school  information, local directory services, 
demographic profiles, council information, crime reports and transport links in a given area. 
Much of this information is PSI from many different sources. It derives revenue from 
advertising, partnerships and from providing business-to-busi ness information services. 1.3 
million people visit the site every month. 
The importance and potential of PSI and Web 2.0  was highlighted in “ The Power of 
Information Review”18, which took a practical look at th e use and development of citizen 
and government-generated information in the UK, and concluded that this growing area 
represents a story of opportunities  for the development of new products and services. In a 
recent follow-up to this review, the UK cabinet Office launched a “showusabetterway”  
competition19 in June 2008,, calling for entries on news  ways and ideas as how to re-use PSI 
in the UK, and providing the winner with pr ize money (£20 000) to develop and launch 
his/her project to maximum effect. More than 450 participants took part in the competition, 
with very fascinating and imag inative projects being suggeste d. One of the winners aims to 
develop a website application that would allow users to introduce their postcode and find out 
what they can recycle and where. Another in teresting idea submitted was to develop a UK 
Wreck Map, showing the location of undersea wr ecks around Britain’s coast, which is of 
                                                 
15 http://www.communities.gov.uk/docum ents/communities/doc/1061606.doc . 
16 http://farmsubsidy.org/ . 
17 http://ipts.jrc.ec.europa.eu/publications/pub.cfm?id=1565 . 
18 http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/media/cabinetoffice/strategy/assets/power_information.pdf . 
19 http://www.showusabetterway.co.uk/ . 
 
EN 10   EN great interest to divers. The District of Columbia in the US20 recently held a similar 
competition. These competitions have enable d governments to gain a better understanding of 
the potential of PSI, to identify which informa tion assets held by them are valuable to re-
users, and how they can be mashed up and re -used for the developm ent of newly created 
services and products for new applications. 
2.3. PSI as a driver of innovation and sustainable growth 
Many examples exist of flourishing new small i nnovative firms, products and services, in new 
emerging sectors, which have significant PSI content. 
In the area of utilities, for example, uSwitch21 is a UK internet company which was founded 
in 2000, and provides a free, impartial onlin e and phone-based comparison and switching 
service that helps customers co mpare prices and services offe red by the different utilities 
providers. It combines private information with  PSI to provide its se rvices. It developed a 
series of calculators that evalua te a number of key factors, in cluding price, lo cation, service 
and method of payment, and advises customers on the best deal to suit their needs. It was 
bought in March 2006 by EW Scripps for £210 million.  
Similarly, in the area of meteorological information, Meteosim,22 which started as a 
university spin-off company in Barcelona, has specialised in offering products and 
consultancy services to the wind energy indust ry, such as wind power forecasting, and has 
substantially grown in parall el with the development of the wind energy industry. 
In the area of geographical information, user s can now consult and use cartographic maps 
from their computers. Services such as Viamichelin  and Mappy  have become popular sites 
for anybody planning a trip or holiday. Another g ood example of new services provided with 
a significant PSI geogra phical content is Google Maps/Google Earth or Geoportail  in France, 
a service of the IGN (Institut Geographique National). 
Google Maps 
Google is a free web mapping se rvice application and technology provided by Google. It 
offers street maps, route planni ng services and high-resolution satellite images of urban areas 
in numerous countries around the world. Some of its imagery comes from governmental 
sources. Google’s programming model has led to the creation of numerous value-added 
services in the form of mashups that link G oogle Maps with other internet-accessible data 
sources. WikiCrimes is a wiki-style website wher e internet users can report crimes by placing 
pins on GoogleMaps.  
The examples highlighted above have grow n considerably and become established players in 
their respective markets. PSI in these examples is a valuable raw material that has been re-
used by parties in added-value info rmation products and services. PSI has widely shown 
itself , in this digital age,  to be a driver of innovation and growth,  and could greatly 
                                                 
20 http://www.appsfordemocracy.org/ . 
21 http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/media/cabinetoffice/strategy/assets/power_information.pdf . 
22 http://www.meteosimtruewind.com/ . 
 
EN 11   EN contribute to achieving the “Growth and Jobs Strategy”23, a revised version of the Lisbon 
Agenda.  
The above MEPSIR and OFT CUPI report24 claims there is still widely unmet potential of 
PSI markets . These and other reports conclude that, w ith further availability of information 
and competition in the re-use market, PSI’s contribution to the eco nomy could be much 
greater. The CUPI report concluded, for example,  that, if there were more competition in 
public sector information re-use, PSI’s  contribution to the UK economy could easily double  
in terms of value to  €1.5 billion per year.  
3. T HE PUBLIC SECTOR INFORMATION (PSI)  DIRECTIVE  
The PSI Directive25 provides for minimum rules applicable in all the Member States  on 
the re-use of the informati on of public sector bodies and on their behaviour  in the 
information market. However, Member States are encouraged  to go beyond this minimum 
level, and adopt measures  which are more favourable for re-use . 
The Directive was adopted in order to addres s the many problems faced by private companies 
when dealing with public sect or information holders: high  charges, long response times, 
unfair competition, exclusive arra ngements and the general non-av ailability of information for 
re-use. These barriers and the different ways of handling the issue in the Member States made 
it difficult for companies to develop added-value services and products ba sed on public sector 
information, in particular cross-border products. 
By enhancing the right to re-use, laying down transparency requirements, setting an upper 
limit on charges and establishing fair competition rules, the Directive aims to foster the 
creation of EU-wide information products and services based on public sector information. 
The Directive encourages Member States to make as much information av ailable for re-use as 
possible. Ultimately, it targets a change of cultu re in the public sector, creating a favourable 
environment for the re-use of its information assets. 
3.1. Key provisions 
The Directive covers all type of documents. It addresses material held by public sector bodies in 
the Member States, at national, regi onal and local level, as well as  organisations for the most part 
financed by or under the contro l of the public aut horities, such as national meteorological 
institutes and mapping agenci es. A broad definition of docu ment ensures th at the most 
economically valuable data assets are covered by the Directive. However,  the Directive does not 
apply to educational, scientific, br oadcasting and cultura l institutions.  
The Directive is built around two key pillars of  the internal market: transparency and fair 
competition.  It contains rules on the following aspects: 
                                                 
23 http://ec.europa.eu/growthandjobs/pdf/COM2005_024_en.pdf . 
24 http://www.oft.gov.uk/advice_and_resources/pub lications/reports/consumer-protection/oft861 . 
25 http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/policy/ psi/docs/pdfs/directive/psi_directive_en.pdf . 
 
EN 12   EN 3.1.1. Clear procedures to deal with requests for re-use 
The lack of standardised conditions for re-u se is a major barrier to opening up the full 
potential of the European market of PSI-based products and services. The Directive deals with 
this problem by providing for a minimum set of  procedural rules on requests for re-use. 
Article 4 of the PSI Directive lays down an obligation on pub lic sector bodies to process 
requests for re-use within a reasonable time that  is consistent with the timeframes laid down 
for the processing of requests fo r access to documents or, in the absence of time limits or 
other rules regarding the timel y provision of documents, not exceeding 20 working days. The 
same article also provides for specific procedural  requirements in the event of a refusal to re-
use (such as an obligation to communicate the gr ounds for refusal or reference to the means of 
redress). Documents should be ma de available for re-use in all formats and languages in which 
the information exists. Where possi ble, the material must be made  available by electronic means. 
3.1.2. Upper limit for charging 
The upper limit is based on costs incurred to produ ce the information, together with a reasonable 
return on investment. Lower charges (or no charges at al l) can certainly be applied, and 
public sector bodies are encouraged to do so . On request, public sector bodies have to say how 
the charges are calculated. Article 6 of the Directive provides that , where charges for re-use of 
public sector information are app licable, the total income  from supplying and allowing re-use of 
documents shall not exceed the cost s of collection, production, re production and dissemination, 
together with a reasonable return on investment.  
3.1.3. Transparency of conditions applicable  to re-use and means of redress 
Article 7 of the Directive requires any applicable conditions and standard charges  for the re-
use of documents held by public sector bodies to be pre-established and published , through 
electronic means where possible and appr opriate. It also has to be clear where applicants can 
seek redress against deci sions that affect them. 
3.1.4. Obligation to avoid discrimination between market players in the conditions for re-
use 
The PSI Directive tackles the problem of unfair te rms of competition in an area where private 
companies compete between themselves, but ve ry often also with public sector bodies 
providing the information. The Directive prohi bits discriminatory treatment between 
comparable categories of re-use (Article 10(1)) and also cross-subsidies within public sector 
bodies where public sector docu ments are re-used for commercial activities which fall outside 
the scope of their public tasks (Article 10(2)).  
3.1.5. Prohibition of exclusive a rrangements, with th e exception of the exclusive rights 
necessary for the provision of a service in the public interest 
The Directive also seeks to ma ke PSI available to all potent ial re-users. Article 11 of the 
Directive provides for a prohibition on exclusive a rrangements. Such arra ngements have to be 
terminated at the latest by the end of 2008. However, when an exclusive right is necessary for the 
provision of a service in the public interest, an  exception from the abov e rule is allowed. The 
validity of the reason granting an exclusive arrangement must be regularly reviewed. Such 
exceptional exclusive arrangements must be also transparent and made public.  
 
EN 13   EN 4. T RANSPOSITION OF THE DIRECTIVE  
This was the first ever Community legal in strument aimed at harmonising the framework 
conditions for the re-use of public sector information at EU level. This and the fact  that it is a 
‘horizontal’ instrument, which cuts across th e whole public sector ad ministrations, and is 
shaped differently from count ry to country, triggered di fferent approaches to the 
implementation of the Directive and somewhat disparate transposition. 
4.1. Different approaches to implementation 
Member States have taken basically three differe nt approaches to implementing the Directive. 
Several Member States (11) have adopted speci fic implementing legislation regarding the re-
use of PSI (for example Germany, Spain or Ital y). 4 MS have used a combination of new 
measures specifically addressing re-use and le gislation predating the Directive (e.g Denmark) 
and 8 MS have adapted their legislative framew ork for access to documents to include re-use 
of PSI (e.g. France). The remaining Member Stat es (4) have notified the Commission only of 
measures predating the Directive, with no specific re-use provisions (e.g. Poland and 
Hungary).  
The Directive makes commercial re-use possible in Belgium 
In Belgium the PSI Directive sparked a ra dical change from a complete ban on the 
dissemination or reuse of public sector informat ion (so-called ‘documents  administratifs’) for 
commercial purposes to a system based on the freedom to reuse such information for both 
commercial and non-commercial purposes.  
A table setting out the different  implementing measures in the Member States can be found in 
the Annex. 
4.2. Delays in implementation, revised laws 
While only four countries managed to notify thei r transposition measures before the deadline 
of 1 July 2005, the majority did so at a later stage and, in five cases, only after infringement 
proceedings were launched (the Commission initi ally launched infringement proceedings by 
sending letters of formal notice to 15 Memb er States in October 2005, it pursued the 
proceedings in March 2006 with reasoned opini ons to 8 Member States, and the Court of 
Justice delivered four judgements in 2007 for non-transposition The la st notification of 
national transposition (by Belgium) took place only in May 2008, more than two and a half 
years after the deadline. 
4.3. Complaints, infringement procedures 
Following conformity checks of national trans position measures and/or complaints, the 
Commission approached the national authoritie s of a number of Member States on non-
conformity issues in line with the “A Europe of results – Applying Community Law”26 
approach. Several Member States then change d their transposition la ws to accommodate the 
concerns raised (e.g. Ireland and Greece). In th ree cases the Commission decided to initiate 
infringement proceedings for incorrect and incomplete transposition, the first, in 2006, triggered by a complaint (Sweden) and th e second and third, in 2008 and 2009, on its own 
                                                
 
26 http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexU riServ.do?uri=COM:2007:0502:FIN:EN:HTML . 
 
EN 14   EN initiative against Poland27 and Italy28. The Commission considers th at several key provisions 
of the Directive have not been properly tr ansposed, in particular  concerning charging, non-
discrimination, prohibition of ex clusive agreements and pro cedural requirements. Very 
recently, several additional complaints have been lodged to the Commission for incorrect 
application of the Directive; these are still due to be looked into by the Commission. So far 
very few non-conformity issues have b een brought before the national courts. 
5. R ESULTS OF MEMBER STATE AND STAKEHOLDER PUBLIC CONSULTATION ON THE 
REVIEW OF THE DIRECTIVE  
5.1. Results of the Member State consulta tion on the review of the Directive 
The Directive itself establishes that the Com mission will submit a report to the European 
Parliament and the Council in 200 8 on the results of the review  of the application of the 
Directive.  
In this context, a questionnaire was submitted to the Member States via their representatives 
in the PSI Group,29 to provide the Commission with their views on the review. The 
consultation was divided into 3 specific sec tions: i) implementation and impact of the 
Directive, ii) scope of the Di rective, and iii) looking ahead. 14 Member States  have 
responded  to the questionnaire. A summary report and the specific Member State responses 
are publicly available at http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/policy/psi/index_en.htm  
By and large, the consultation  yielded substantial positive feedback on the impact of the 
PSI Directive among Member States, which, from a qualitative point of view, regard the PSI 
Directive as positive as it provides a legal fram ework for the re-use of PSI in their respective 
countries – an area that was la rgely unregulated before. The Di rective has set a new policy in 
the Member States and in the EU, provided a se t of principles with which public bodies now 
have to comply as regards the re-use of  PSI, and triggered much positive reaction. 
From a quantitative point  of view, some Member States  take the view that it is too early to 
tell what the impact of the Directive has been, due to the late transposition into national 
legislation  in certain cases. Others consider that it is very difficult to provide factual 
economic figures to measure the impact of re -use policies in their respective countries. 
Member States (e.g. UK, Slovenia and France ) that have implemented a considerable 
number of practical measures to support the implementing legislation of the Directive have 
signalled that the Directive has had a positive impact  on their information market. 
However, Member States have also stated that the full potential of PSI re-use is far from 
being attained  due to the lack of awareness  by public sector bodies  of the opportunities 
offered and of their resp onsibilities as regard PSI re-use, and due to the limited knowledge 
by the private sector of the availability and potential  of PSI re-use. In addition, some 
Member States have indicated that the private s ector finds it very diffi cult to establish what 
                                                 
27 http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?ref erence=IP/08/1524&forma t=HTML&aged=0&langua 
ge=EN&guiLanguage=en . 
28 http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?ref erence=IP/09/425&format=HTML&aged=0&langua 
ge=EN&guiLanguage=en . 
29 It consists of Member State officials, local or regional authorities, and representatives from private 
sector organisations who meet regularly to exchange good practises of PSI re-use and initiatives 
supporting PSI re-use and discuss practical issues  regarding transposition of the PSI Directive. 
 
EN 15   EN type of PSI is available for re-use and to discuss PSI re-use with  different levels of 
government. 
Member States have also fla gged the problems private comp anies face when public bodies 
compete commercially with them in the market , notably when the latter is undertaking its 
public task. 
As regards the impact on pricing,  most Members States believe that the Directive has 
facilitated and consol idated a general trend towards applying low and even marginal cost 
pricing regimes  in their respective countries and greater transparency  has been introduced 
within all levels of government when establishi ng prices. A few responses said that, while the 
Directive establishes minimum standards to harm onise the re-use of PSI in the EU, at the 
same time it encourages Member States to go beyond this minimum level of harmonisation. 
Some of them have thus decided to go further than the provisions of the Directive and have 
declared plans, for example, to apply marginal  cost pricing to all central government PSI in 
future (e.g. the Netherlands), or have decided that all public sector information must be 
available for re-use (e.g. Slovenia). 
As regards the scope of the Directive, the vast majority of respondents much appreciate  the 
potential for re-use of  the information held by cultural , research and public broadcasting  
institutions,  although most of them are of the opinion that there are no grounds to bring 
these sectors within the scope of the Directive.  Member States consider that the material 
these institutions hold includes substantial third party IPRs and copyright  works, which 
would not be allowed for re-use in any case, and the administrative burden  and associated 
costs these institutions would incur in order to comply with the Directive would not be 
outweighed by the potential benefits. Ther e seems to be a common view that a substantial 
cost/benefit study  on this topic should be undertaken before considering extending the scope 
of the Directive. It should also be noted that  two Member States (Lat via and Lithuania) would 
like the scope to be extended to sectors currently excluded. 
The overwhelming majority of the Member States that responded to the questionnaire 
believe that, at present, it is too prematur e to review the Directive, preferring to allow 
further time for full implementation and to  reconsider a possible review at a later stage. 
5.2. Results of stakeholder consultati on on the review of the Directive 
In addition to the Member States questionnaire, an online stakeholder consultation  on the 
review of the PSI Directive was undertaken to gather information from as many sources as 
possible, including public sect or content holders and comme rcial and non-commercial re-
users (universities, NGOs) on their views of di fferent aspects of the implementation, impact 
and scope of the PSI Directive. The online consultation was launched on 16 May 2008 and 
closed on 15 September 2008. The consultation was published on the Information Society PSI 
Thematic Portal30 and on the Commission’s ‘Your Voice in Europe’ webpage.31 A summary 
report and the specific Member States’ responses are publicly available at 
http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/policy/psi/index_en.htm  
The Commission received 38 responses  to the stakeholder consultation. These embrace the 
different parties involved in the PSI value ch ain: content holders (government agencies), 
                                                 
30 http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/policy/psi/index_en.htm . 
31 http://ec.europa.eu/information_s ociety/tl/activities/consultations /index_en.htm#open_consultations . 
 
EN 16   EN commercial associations, private firms, public –private and non-profit associations, private 
individuals, and two others that do not fall into any particular category (a political party and a 
PSI thematic network).  
Overall, respondents reported that the Directive has had a positive  effect on promoting PSI 
reuse  in their respective count ries by providing and establishing a legislative framework  in 
a previously unregulated market.  
However, diverging views  exist between public sector bodies (the supply side)  and re-
users (the demand side)  on the current PSI reuse environment. While the former group  
considers it to be satisfactory and working well , re-users are more critical and feel that 
implementation of the Directive has been much too slow . Some respondents go further and 
state that it has been neither properly impl emented nor applied in the Member States. A 
majority of respondents  consider that significant barriers remain  that need to be addressed 
in order to tap the full PSI re-use potential in the EU. Problems  frequently cited are the lack 
of awareness  of the potential of PSI re -use and of the Directive among public sector bodies, 
especially at regional and local level, little effort  from public bodies to facilitate and 
promote re-use , lack of knowledge or mechanisms to identify what information is available 
for re-use, the non-mandatory requirement for PSI re-use , strict licensing  conditions 
imposed by public sector content holders,  the limits of the public task  when public bodies 
commercially compete with private firms, high prices  for PSI, unfair competition practices  
by public sector bodies, very limited transparency in public bodies’ re-use policies  and 
particularly the way char ges are calculated, and the absence of efficient means of redress in 
most countries .  
As regards the impact of the Directive on charging policies  practised by the public sector, the 
overwhelming majority  of private re-users believe that implementation has hardly had any 
impact on the pricing of PSI , although some laudable excep tions have been signalled.  
A significant group of stakeholders expressed their support for extending the scope  of the 
Directive to cultural, research and broadcasting institutions , as it was felt that this would 
have an impact on developing the co ntent market in Europe. However, specific stakeholders  
(basically associations) r epresenting the views of the so-called “excluded sectors”  came out 
against any extension  of the scope, underlining the high administrative burden they would 
have to incur to comply with the Directive, and pointing out that, in  addition, most of the 
content they hold would not in any case fall within the scope of the Directive, since it has 
third party copyrights. Th e mechanism proposed by the High Level Group on Digital 
Libraries in its Public Private Partnership Report32 was mentioned as a way forward  by 
some respondents; thes e institutions would be kept out of the scope  of the Directive, but 
would aim to abide by the principles a nd spirit of the PSI Directive.  
The bulk of the responses from re-users suggest legislative amendments  to the Directive to 
make it “sharper” and “tighter”  in its obligations for public sector bodies , which enjoy 
great flexibility in the cu rrent legislative framework . The suggestions range from making 
the obligation for allowing PSI re-use the norm , imposing marginal cost pricing , 
requiring the establishment of  independent regulators  in the Member States and/or dispute 
resolution mechanisms, and introd ucing greater clarity regardi ng the public tasks of public 
sector content holders. In addition, res pondents suggested drawing up national asset 
                                                 
32 http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/digital_libraries/doc/hleg/reports/ppp/ppp_final.pdf . 
 
EN 17   EN lists/repositories and obliging Member States to report annually to the Commission on their 
measures to promote PSI. 
Finally, it was strongly recomm ended that guidance be issu ed on specific terms of the 
Directive, which are, in their opinion, very ambiguous, such as the definitions of “public 
tasks” and “document” and the concepts of “mar ginal cost pricing” and “reasonable return on 
investment”. 
6. E VALUATION OF THE SCOPE AND IMPACT OF THE DIRECTIVE  
6.1. Impact of the Directive 
6.1.1. Increase in re-use of PSI Whilst the Directive came into effect in 2003, but was not fully transposed in all Member 
States until early 2008, positive effects have been reported .  
To measure the impact of the re-use of PSI, an assessment
33 was carried out on behalf of the 
Commission. This focused on three main PSI sectors: geographical and meteorological 
information, which has the highest economic valu e, and legal and administrative information, 
an area which is singled out  in the review clause.  
The conclusion of the assessment is undoubt edly positive, as th e re-use of PSI is 
increasing in all three sectors although the im pact across these sectors has been uneven.  
The assessment indicates that the Directive has had its strongest impact  in the sector of 
geographical information  (GI). The GI market is growing steadily across European 
markets. The assessment reports that since 2002  re-use requests have increased by 250% 
on average  and the download volume has grown simultaneously by  approximately 350%. 
Two thirds (66%)  of respondents of GI re-u sers (private firms) repor ted that their income has 
increased in recent years and new emerging players are entering the market offering 
pioneering applications for geographical information. The National Mapping and Cadastral 
Agencies (NMCA) of Spain and Austria  have made significant changes to their charging 
policies, and provide very good examples of pricing and licensing models  geared to 
facilitating re-use.  
A substantial number of public ho lders of GI have introduced si gnificant changes to their data 
policies as a result of the Directive, many of wh ich refer to technical issues such as data 
formats and modes of delivery. As a consequence, GI is increasingly being offered on internet 
portals or via web services. While recognisi ng and welcoming these improvements, GI re-
users still complain  about restrictive licensing and high prices , although a few also 
highlighted positive changes in terms of pricing and licensing (34% and 28% of positive replies respectively).  
The report states that a large majority (79%) of private re-users of  GI would like to 
have access to more public GI but high pricin g and restrictive licensing are preventing 
them  from doing so. In order to meet this dema nd, the assessment suggests that public sector 
holders should improve their delivery conditions rapidly. It should be noted that in recent 
                                                
 
33 http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/polic y/psi/docs/pdfs/micus_re port_december2008.pdf . 
 
EN 18   EN years GI has been made increasingly ava ilable by alternative private sources,  
consequently leading to a substitution of public sector information.  
The assessment also reveals th at the Directive has had a considerable impact  in the sector of 
legal and administrative information.  The majority of public sect or holders say that they 
have made noticeable changes to their data polic y since 2002, nearly half of them confirming 
that the changes have been brought about by legislation. The majority of public sector 
holders (79%)  also report that they provide legi slative and administrative information free of 
charge on their websites. 
The market for legal and administrative in formation is growing: on average by 40%  
since 2002 . Most of the private firms (legal publishers) surveyed reported ever-increasing 
rates of income. According to the assessment, it is in particular those who add value to PSI who have reported exceptional growth rates.  In addition, several new online information 
portals have been set up which offer convenient search tools (e.g. thesaurus) to access and re-
use legal information. 
However, the survey also highl ights the continuing dissatisfacti on expressed by re-users about 
public authorities. In this sector the lack of informatio n on what legal and administrative 
information is accessible and available  for re-use was flagged as  a major area of concern. 
Although this can be explained by the decentralised  organisation of jurisdiction, it could also 
indicate that re-users do not have a successful business relationship with the respective public 
sector holder.  
In the sector of meteorological information , the assessment suggests that the Directive has 
had limited impact so far. Although the National Meteorological Services (NMSs) have also 
introduced many changes to their data policy,  only 5 out of 25 NMSs reported that these 
policy changes were due to changes in nati onal legislation. The market for private  weather 
services is also growing.  Most of the respond ents (74%) reported an increase in data volume 
download of 70%  and, of those that reported figures fo r turnover, all conf irmed significant 
increases in recent years. However, it can be assumed that the number of companies active in 
the meteorological sector in Europe is not more  than 70, which is still a very small number for 
a market with such massive re-use potential. 
Meteorological re-users co mplain basically about pricing, transparency and licensing 
conditions , and report that discriminatory practices ar e particularly prevalent in this sector. 
Many re-users expressed their wish for an effi cient system providing free meteorological data 
and unrestrictive licences, as provided in the United States by NOOA,
34 from which they are 
increasingly gathering much of their data. The majority of re-use rs of meteorological 
information (88%) would like to obtain more PS I from holders. However, due to high pricing 
and licensing they currently re fuse to purchase additional data  and aim to either gather it 
elsewhere (US) or set up complementary (private ) networks to gather the information they 
may require.  
Meteomedia 
Meteomedia is now one of the leading w eather service provider s in Europe, with 
approximately 120 employees. It operates offi ces in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Canada 
and the United States. The company has developed a complementary private ground weather 
station monitoring network in Germany and Switzerland, with about 600 stations today.  
                                                 
34 US National Weather Service. http://www.noaa.gov/ . 
 
EN 19   EN The demand for more PSI in the market is still significant , as re-users of all three sectors 
have reported continued buying interest. In order to  meet this demand and thus help to support 
the information economy in Europe, the assessment believes that  PSI holders should focus 
on crucial aspects such as li censing and pricing, and provide  greater support for the re-
use of PSI. 
6.1.2. Effects of the princi ples applied to charging 
Given the importance of the current and potential economic value of the commercial re-use of 
PSI, there is an ongoing debate about what access model and re-use arrangements  would 
facilitate the greatest re-use of PSI, m aximising its economic and social potential . This 
topic raises many controversial issues regard ing the manner in which public sector bodies 
should make their information publicly availabl e, including whether it is appropriate to 
implement cost recovery policies and to use PSI as an income-generating source.  
The literature regarding access to PSI typically makes reference to four broad access models, 
profit maximising, cost recover y, marginal cost and zero cost . The first models target 
profit-maximising strategies where prices are se t above the costs of da ta production at market 
levels. Cost-recovery strategies aim to recoup so me or all of the costs of data production. In 
the latter models PSI is priced at either no  or marginal cost. In today’s digital world 
information products and data are expensive to  produce, but, once produced, they are very 
cheap to disseminate. 
In 2008, Cambridge University35 investigated, at the request of the British Government, the 
impact of adopting different models for the provision of PSI by UK trading funds, which are 
required to be as financially self-sufficient as  possible by selling their data and services and 
eventually providing a return to the UK Treasury. The study examined the costs and benefits to society, and the effects on government revenue  of the different charging policies mentioned 
previously. It conclude d in its report that charging no or marginal costs for PSI results in 
social and economic benefits  that far outweigh the immediate financial benefits attained 
by cost-recovery strategies . However, critics of this report have questioned the permanent 
sustainability of a scheme provi ding PSI at no or marginal pri ces when the cost of creating 
and maintaining quality PSI can be substant ial. The UK Treasury has commissioned a follow-
up report (“Shareholder Executive Assessment”)
36 to analyse the argument as to whether the 
UK economy would benefit from modifying the current trading funds business model. If the 
current business model of the trad ing funds were to be  changed to marginal  cost, this would 
require substantial additional inve stment from public sources. 
Ordnance Survey (UK) 
Ordnance Survey maps every square metre of Gr eat Britain. For most of its existence, the 
agency has been a government body, publicly f unded and managed. Since the public sector 
reforms in the 1980s and 1990s, however, it ha s become a Trading Fund. It is therefore 
required to fund both its public task and commercial work from its own revenues (cost 
recovery basis). The quality of its products is considered rema rkable by stakeholders. Further 
to the transposition of the Directive into UK law,  a series of complaints have been made by 
some of its customers about it s licensing policies, through the appropriate redress mechanism 
                                                 
35 http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file45136.pdf . 
36 http://www.shareholderexecutive.gov.uk/pub lications/pdf/tradingfunds250608terms.pdf . 
 
EN 20   EN in the UK. The OS has recently modified its licensing regime and is introducing a free of 
charge arrangement for the non-commer cial re-use of its information.  
It should be recalled that, as  regards the pricing of PSI, Article 6 of the Directive  stipulates 
that “where charges are made , the total income from suppl ying and allowing re-use of 
documents shall not exceed the cost of collection, production, reproduction and 
dissemination, together with a reasonable return on investment . Charges should be cost-
oriented over the appropriate accounting period  and calculated in line  with the accounting 
principles applicable to the public sector bodies involved”. Th e Directive also states that 
“Member States should encourage public sector  bodies to make documents available at 
charges that do not exceed the marginal costs for reproducing and disseminating the 
documents”. 
There are some recent remarkable examples of public sector bodies that have adapted 
their policies to a close to marginal cost pricing approach. The transposition of the PSI 
Directive into Austrian law included amendm ents to the Austrian Act for Surveying 
concerning the delivery of data. In this context, the Austrian National Mapping and 
Cadastral Agency (BEV)  was already  able to change its pricing and licensing model in 
2006 for certain datasets , which resulted in a significant reduction of fees of up to 97%  
and transparent re-use conditions. As a conse quence of this drastic reduction in prices, re-use 
requests and orders have exploded,  with increases of orders of up to 7 000% for digital 
orthophotos. The additional demand emerged from small and medium-sized companies, which can be classified as “new user groups”  in the branches of geo-marketing, health 
services and agriculture. The BEV reports that it is ma intaining its total turnover . This is a 
win-win strategy  whereby PSI re-use has been largely inc reased with no impact on the 
finances of the Cadastral Institution . A similar case has occurred with the Spanish 
Cadastre.  
The Directive has made for an explosion in demand  
In the context of implementing the PSI Directive, the Spanish Cadastre modified its access 
and re-use policy, pricing on a marginal cost basis,  which has led to an increase in demand for 
its geographical information. For example, more than 17 000 cadas tral certificates have been 
issued and 900.000 maps served daily si nce the adoption of the new policy.  
It should also be noted that the US access model  aims to minimise government control and 
maximise public access to and re-use of PSI. In the US, federal information  (‘Circular A-
130’ – Management of Federal Information Res ources) has no copyright and hence falls into 
the public domain. The private sector is encourag ed and expected to use raw content to create 
new information services and buy public data at no more than the cost of dissemination, 
and without any government re-use restrictions . It is claimed that by disseminating PSI as 
widely as possible, the private sector adopts a greater role in enhancing the value of PSI by 
establishing services from raw public data and then re-selling it. While the actual contribution 
of PSI to the US economy is difficult to measure and quantify, it is believed to be considerable in terms of the number of new firms being established, additional jobs being created and tax revenue generated.
37  
                                                 
37 http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/policy/psi/ docs/pdfs/pira_study/commercial_final_report.pdf . 
 
EN 21   EN 6.2. Scope of the Directive  
The review clause enshrined in Article 13 of the Directive re quires the Commission to address 
the scope of the Directiv e in its report to the European Parliament a nd the Council in 2008 on 
the application of the Directive. The Commission has to analyse whether cultural establishments, education and research orga nisations and public service broadcasters, 
currently excluded from th e scope, ought to be cove red by the Directive.  
6.2.1. Cultural institutions 
(1) Scope 
The question of whether cultural institutions  should be brought within the scope of the 
Directive is complex. In general, cultural institutions represent a hybrid sector , collecting 
material of which a high proporti on involves third-party rights, but also holding amongst their 
collections a considerable amount of public domain material .  
Cultural institutions have embarked on major digitisation tasks in an effort to achieve their 
mission and make full use of the opportunities th e new digital environment offers. Funds for 
online digitisation and availability of cultural content are scarce and are being rationalised, 
and, with increasing public spending restricti ons, public-private partners hips (PPP) have come 
into play. Private firms are cooperating with public  institutions in their digitisation efforts in 
exchange, for example, for web space for advertising. Other cultural institutions have 
outsourced the digitisation and exploitation of th eir content to commercial image providers.  
A study
38 launched by the Commission on whether or not Europe’s cultural institutions  
should adopt the principles and provisions of the Directive and be brought within its formal 
scope found that the “ benefits of subjecting them to the regime of the Di rective appear on 
balance to be modest  at current levels of activity, although it  is probable that  the value of 
cultural information will rise in the context of new technology-driven  developments in and 
around digital libraries”.  
The bulk of the discussion surrounding access to and re-use of this type of content focuses on 
the issue of copyright. The concep t of who is the owne r of copyright is not a simple one, and 
documents subject to third-party IPR are excluded from the Directive.  
The report states that the licensing of cultu ral content would in any case require major 
administrative activity  to clear third-party  or unknown rights . There is also a concern 
among cultural institutions that the obliga tion to respond to re-use requests will lead to heavy 
processing costs, including identify ing and dealing with rights holders . It could be 
questioned whether undertaking such activities go es beyond the remit of these institutions.  
The report highlights that the recent launch of the Europeana  service throws up enormous 
potential  for exposing tens of millions of items of  cultural content available for re-use, and 
says that one possible disadvantage of cultural institutions remaining outside the scope of the Directive is that valuable PSI held by archiv es may not become available for re-users on the 
terms that it specifies, and may ha mper the potential re-use market. 
                                                
 
38 Assessment of the Economic and Social Impact of  the Public Domain in the Information Society, 
Rightscom, 4/2009. 
 
EN 22   EN Overall, the report concludes  that “whilst there is little  doubt that PSI held by the cultural 
sector  has a significant potential value for re-users , the advantages  of including cultural 
heritage institutions within the scope of the Directive are currently difficult to assess and 
require further investigation over time . The possible implications  to this sector, as 
previously described, should not be allowed in the longer term to outweigh the possible 
advantages to the economy, industry and societ y. This situation will clearly need to be 
monitored over the next few years in the quite  possible event that large-scale digitisation 
combined with enhanced ICT for accessing c ontent creates conditions where competition 
factors in relation to re -use of cultural content become more evident”. 
(2) Charging at cultural institutions 
Cultural institutions are widely committ ed to achieving their various social 
(cultural/educational) and economic goals thro ugh the principle of providing free access to 
direct end users (general public , scholars and researchers). However, they are inclined to 
regard commercial re-use as a separate matter,  for which they consider that they should be 
compensated. In the above-mentioned study, 76% of respondents  in the report offer free 
access to their content for end users, while the remaining 24%  make some kind of charge 
for accessing at least some of their content. It should be noted that 32% of respondents 
charge for licences to re-use  content, showing a tendency among some cultural bodies to 
distinguish between access and (c ommercial) re-use in their charging policies. The recent 
launch of EUROPEANA , the European Digital Library, has made this charging issue very 
visible for some of the colle ctions it makes available.  
According to the study, image libraries  are probably the current most widespread form of 
commercial activity  undertaken by cultu ral institutions. Although this area of activity is not 
considered as being financ ially important, the potential loss of these revenues  and the 
probable absence of budgetary compensation  remains a fear for many cultural institutions. 
Many of the original objects  in question are in the public domain  and no longer covered by 
copyright , limiting third party access and re-use to this material . This presents the 
potential risk of public domain material becoming “privatised” in the digital world 
through restrictive access and re-use conditions . This could be of particular concern when 
cultural institutions hold unique pieces of art. 
A number of cultural institutions implement fr ee access and re-use policies with their public 
domain collections. The French National Li brary allows public domain books to be 
downloaded from its website.  
6.2.2. Educational institutions 
The widespread and efficient access to and re-use of scientific information adds to the 
efficiency of research and leads to  increased returns on R&D investment. Scientific 
information  is an important category of PSI in that very frequently research is publicly The recommendation of the High Level Gr oup on Digital Libr aries Sub-group on 
PPP that cultural institutions should aim to abide by the principles of the Directive 
and should seek to avoid exclusive arra ngements in establis hing PPPs has been 
identified and signalled as a way forward to make cultural content more accessible 
and available for re-use.  
 
EN 23   EN funded  and is carried out by universities or pub lic sector research centres. Scientific 
information is a highly specific  type of PSI, very different in nature to statistics or 
meteorological information.  
The scientific world  has a well established system for di sseminating and exploiting 
research findings and results . For example, the patent syst em was originally designed and 
established for the wide dissemination of i nventions. The internet and new information 
society tools have changed the way in whic h researchers can access, share and re-use 
scientific information. “Open access” policies purs ue the goal of making sc ientific articles and 
research data freely accessible to the reader on the web. It is widely felt by the research community that publicly funded research  should be widely available and useable to all, to 
maximise its potential, a view which is reflected in  the Commission Communication on 
“Scientific information in the digital age”
39.  
6.2.3. Public service broadcasting institutions 
Public service broadcasters hol d amongst their collections a cons iderable amount of valuable 
material with significant commercial and non-commercial re-use potential.  
Given that the Directive does not apply to documents if a third party owns the intellectual 
property rights  (IPRs), this provision could considerably narrow the number of documents 
that broadcasters could make available an d accessible for re-use purposes under the 
principles of the Directive . Allowing the commercial re-use of broadcast material would 
require the transfer of rights  from a large number of persons or entities who may have 
contributed to creating such mate rial for the public sector body in  question if such material is 
to be made subject to the pr ovisions of the PSI Directive . This process can become complex 
and cumbersome.  
6.3. Re-use of Commission information 
In April 2006, the Commission adopted a Decision40 on the re-use of Commission 
information , applying internally the principles of  the PSI Directive, and going beyond those 
principles in certain provisions, such as marg inal cost pricing. The Commission is facilitating 
the re-use of important information resources,  such as European legislation and case law 
(“EUR-Lex”41), public procurement information (“TED”42), statistics – Statistical Office of 
the European Communities (“Eurostat”43) – and the Directorate-General for Translation’s 
translation memories for the Acquis Communautaire .44 
6.3.1. Identify, publish, promote – strategy 
The Decision on the re-use of Commission info rmation lays down the conditions for the re-
use of documents held by the Commission or  on its behalf by the Office for Official 
Publications of the European Communities (Publications Office), the aim being to facilitate 
wider re-use of information and enhance the image of openness of the Commission. The 
                                                 
39 http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/Le xUriServ.do?uri=C ELEX:52007DC0056:EN:NOT . 
40 http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriSe rv.do?uri=OJ:L:2006:107:0038:0041:EN:PDF . 
41 http://eur-lex.europa.eu . 
42 http://ted.europa.eu . 
43 http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu . 
44 http://langtech.jrc.it/DGT-TM.html . 
 
EN 24   EN Decision excludes software and documents cove red by industrial propert y rights, research 
results of the Joint Research Centre (JRC) and documents made accessible to a party under 
specific rules governing privileged access to docu ments. In terms of charging policy, the 
Decision goes beyond the rules set out in the Dire ctive and information is in principle free of 
charge. In specific cases, marginal costs incu rred for the reproduction and dissemination of 
documents may however be recovered. The Commission aims to implement an “Identify-
Publish-Promote” strategy, whereby all Commission departments producing or hosting 
valuable information assets (studies, reports, surveys, statistics, etc.) are recommended to 
make them visible and easily re-usable.  
6.3.2. Examples of re-use of Commission information 
6.3.2.1. Eurostat 
Eurostat adopted a policy of free dissemination back in October 2004 . Re-usable 
documents and data held by Eurostat include different types of sta tistical data, tables, 
databases, metadata, etc. All re-usable inform ation is published on Eurostat’s website with a 
simple legal notice that re-use is fr ee of restrictions for end users.  
Each month, Eurostat’s website registers about 1 million visitor sessions,  300 000 PDF 
downloads and about 350 000 data extr actions. These figures amount to a 500% increase in 
the last 5 years.  Commercial redistribution is permitte d and subject to the respect of the 
conditions stated in the copyright noti ce displayed on the Eurostat website.  
6.3.2.2. EUR-Lex The EUR-Lex web portal provides  direct access to European Union law. The system makes 
it possible to consult the Official Journal of th e European Union, the EU Treaties, legislation, 
case-law and legislative propos als. It also offers exte nsive search facilities.  
The portal is managed by the Publications Office. Access to the site is completely free and not 
subject to any conditions. Reproduction for personal use or for further non-commercial dissemination to end-users is authorised on condition that some form of acknowledgement is made. Downloading for commercial re-disseminatio n purposes is subject to the respect of the 
conditions stated in the copyright notice displa yed on the EUR-Lex website. Delivery of files 
(e.g. in xml format), namely for exploitation and commercial re-dissemi nation, is subject to 
the conclusion of a priced licence agreement, issued on behalf of the European Communities 
by the Publications Office 
The number of hits on the EUR-Lex portal  has steadily increased from about 678 700 in 
2007 to 929 000 daily  page views in 2008, a 37% increase .  
The annual volume of data uploaded remains constant, 13265 new documentary  units were 
uploaded in 2008  (i.e. in several languages), compar ed to 14 666 in 2007. The annual volume 
of data downloaded on the portal is on the increase as 330 million documents were 
downloaded in 2008,  compared to 310 million in 2007 (7 % increase). The number of paying 
licences is stable (22 in 2008 versus 23 in 2007). 
6.3.2.3. Translation Memories  In November 2007, the European Commission’s Di rectorate-General for Translation (DGT), 
in joint cooperation with the Join t Research Centre (JRC), made its multilingual Translation 
 
EN 25   EN Memory  for the Acquis Communautaire  (the body of EU law) publicly accessible. This is a 
collection of parallel texts (texts and their translat ion, also referred to as bi-texts) in  22 
languages and 432 possible language combinations.  A translation memory is a collection of 
small text segments and their tr anslation. Translation memories are used to support translators 
by ensuring that pieces of text that have alread y been translated do not need to be translated 
again. Both translation memories and parallel texts are an important linguistic resource that 
can be used for a variety of purposes, including, for example, training automatic  systems for 
statistical machine translation, or producing monolingual or multilingual lexical and semantic 
resources such as dictionaries and ontologi es. The full potential of these tools - as 
communication enablers for business and citizens a like - has not yet been reached, and its full 
market potential remains unknown. The most outstanding advantage  of the translation 
memories  – apart from being freely available – is the number of rare language pairs  (e.g. 
Maltese-Estonian, Slovene-Finnish, etc.). In 2008,  almost 24 000 downloads  of the 
translation memories for the Acquis Communautaire  were registered on the JRC server. 
7. F OLLOW -UP TO IMPLEMENTATION   
7.1. National PSI bodies/dispute settlement bodies 
In some Member States the tran sposition laws have established clear responsibilities in certain 
government departments as regards the access to a nd re-use of PSI. This is notably the case of 
the Office of Public Sector Information (OPS I), which operates from within the National 
Archives in the UK. OPSI provides a wide range of services to the public, information industry, government and the wider public se ctor relating to finding, using, sharing and 
trading information. 
OPSI 
OPSI has UK-wide policy responsibility across government for the re-use of public sector 
information. OPSI is and has been at the h eart of information policy, setting standards, 
delivering access, becoming a redress mechanis m body and encouraging the re-use of public 
sector information.  
In its two years of existence OPSI has: 
published a range of guidance ma terial, which sets out step- by-step what public sector 
organisations need to do to meet their responsibilities; 
contacted over 400 public sector organisations to spread awareness and raise standards; 
introduced the Information Fair Trader Scheme (IFTS), IFTS Online, and Click-Use 
Licensing, which set standards and make it easier to re-use PSI;  
investigated a number of complaints against p ublic sector information holders, leading to 
licensing improvements; 
introduced a PSI mediation scheme, complement ary to the redress body they represent; and 
set up a website with PSI information, which ha s become one of the 10 most visited websites 
in the UK. 
Slovenia and France have also established nati onal bodies responsible for PSI re-use matters, 
including a redress mechanism. The establis hment of these bodies has helped in those 
countries to identify which administrative body addresses issues surrounding access to and re-
use of PSI. In Slovenia, the inform ation Commissioner  has issued several decisions 
regarding re-use matters and in France the CADA (Commission d’accès aux documents 
 
EN 26   EN administratifs)  has seen its area of competence expand to  include re-use issues, and has taken 
a whole series of decisions (53 in 2007) on the re-use of information, most of them in favour 
of re-users.  
7.2. Licensing policy 
The Directive requires public sector  bodies to exercise their copy right in such a way that it 
facilitates and encourages re-u se. The advent of the digital age has improved the manner in 
which information is disseminated, and has led to the emergence of new licences, which are 
seen as a viable alternative to traditional online licensing systems.  
For example, Click-Use is an online licensing system launched by the UK Office of Public 
Sector Information (OPSI) in 2001, which allows  potential users to subm it online requests for 
the re-use of crown copyright material and sign licences electronica lly, normally free of 
charge, which has proven to be quick, transpar ent and secure. Click-Use licences have been 
extremely successful, with over 15 000 licences  in operation.  
Another commonly recognised open licensing model is Creative Commons  (CC). This 
comprises a set of licensing terms and conditions that allow copyright owners to grant some 
or all of their rights to the public while reta ining some rights through a number of conditions. 
The ultimate purpose is to clarify ownership of the information and promote sharing of the 
information under licence. Whilst the original target user group of Creative Commons was 
producers of creative copyright mate rial, there has been growing in terest in its application to 
PSI.45 Another example is the  Catalonian regional Ministry of Justice,46 which uses CC 
licenses  in its publications. CC licences have thus been of prime importance in opening up 
knowledge. Similarly, the Australian Bureau of Statistics  has decided that it will also be 
using a creative commons licence for its statistical47 information. 
7.3. Exclusive deals/arrangements  
Public sector bodies ofte n are the only entities that produce a certain t ype of information and 
therefore have a natural monopoly on this informa tion. This has sometimes led in the past to 
high charges, or to exclusive agreements granted to a single , or a very limited number of 
market players. These exclusive licences prevent other players from obtaining the 
information under similar conditions and pro ducing added-value services based on that 
information. The Directive prescribes  that PSI is to be made availa ble to all potential re-
users under similar conditions . The Directive forbids the existenc e of deals of this kind 
and the transitional period laid down in the Directive for existing exclusive agreements 
ended on 31 December 2008. 
Exclusive agreements between public sector bodi es and private players have been phased out 
in several Member States recently in applica tion of the Directive. Examples are exclusive 
agreements that existed include the Dutch car register, the Latvian st ate registers, and the 
Swedish population register. In the latter cas e, the change was triggered by Commission 
action after a complaint.  
                                                 
45 “Creative Commons licensing for public sector information. Opportunities and pitfalls” Mireille van 
Eechoud & Brenda van der Wal”. 
46 www.gencat.cat . 
47
 http://www.abs.gov.au/websitedbs/D3310114.nsf/4a256353001af3ed4b2562bb00121564/8b2b
dbc1d45a10b1ca25751d000d9b03?opendocument?utm_id=HPI . 
 
EN 27   EN The Directive leads to the dismantling of an information monopoly based on an 
exclusive agreement in Sweden 
In Sweden, the PSI Directive has led to legislative amendments and the termination of an 
exclusive agreement regarding the State’s popu lation register. A private company managed 
the registry and was awarded the exclusive ri ght to be the single en try point for providing 
information contained in this register – prior to  the Directive. The comp any was able to set its 
own charging conditions for providing the information to third parties.  
Sweden has an open and transparent policy rega rding the use of public sector information, 
both for commercial and non-commercial purposes, together with a long tradition of data 
protection. An important block of the information contained in the regist er is provided legally 
to numerous public and private users. This in formation has great economic value for re-use 
since it contains tax declarati ons data, e.g. for credit rating, marketing, insurance and banking 
purposes.  
The Commission received a complaint regarding th e conditions for re-use of this information 
in the register. The change in Sweden was tr iggered by infringement procedures launched by 
the Commission. 
It should also be highlighted that two Member States – the UK48 and the  Netherlands49 – 
have taken early action to iden tify possible exclusive agreements within their public sector 
bodies. Both assessments have indeed identified the ex istence of exclusive agreements  and 
their specific nature, and ha ve reported that currently remedy measures  are being taken to 
terminate these. Unfortunately, no other Memb er States have taken such a systematic 
approach to identifying and phasing out these agreements. 
7.4. Public task  
Public task is an important c oncept of the Directive. On the one hand, it defines its scope and, 
on the other, it sets the boundari es of the concept of re-use. The Directive does not contain a 
precise definition of “public tasks” as such. However, the Directive sets out some boundary 
conditions that this concept has to meet: the task has to be ve sted in a 'public sector body' 
within the meaning of its Article 2 and it has to  be defined by law or other binding rules in the 
Member state concerned or, in the absence of such rules, in line with common administrative practice in the Member state in  question. Activities falling outside the public task will 
typically include the supply of documents that  are produced and charged for exclusively on a 
commercial basis and in competition with others in  the market. The term public task is closely 
related to public se rvice obligations or to services in the general ec onomic interest used in the 
EC treaty and other Community rules. Public service obligations are normally defined as 
obligations which an undertaking would not assu me, or not assume to the same extent or 
under the same conditions, if it were considerin g its own commercial interest. The ECJ has 
examined on a case by case basis whether certain  activities can be cons idered to be such 
services on the basis of certain objective criteria, such as unive rsality and continuity of the 
service, uniform tariff rates and equal terms. 
                                                
 
48 http://www.opsi.gov.uk/advice/psi -regulations/exclusive-agreements . 
49 http://www.epsiplus.net/med ia/files/onderzoek_exclusiev e_contracten_final_2_1 . 
 
EN 28   EN It has been reported that many public sector bod ies do not have a clear statement of their own 
public task. The CUPI Report states, for exampl e, that only two out of the 18 public sector 
bodies surveyed had a standard definition of their public task in the form of a single 
document. If there is no public statement or docum ent that sets out clearly the public task of 
the public body concerned, it becomes more di fficult to assess precisely the boundaries 
between such task and other downstream activitie s that it may carry out in competition with 
other re-users.  
This issue is the cause of much tension between  public sector holders and private re-users. As 
far as the latter are concerned, th is creates two basics problems:  
1) If a public sector body public goes too far in its  mainstream actions, it leaves little room for 
the private sector to act in the market and offer adde d value products or services. For 
example, the MICUS report highlights that the Ge rman State Survey Authorities consider the 
production of maps for leisure activities to be a public task and sell them  at very low prices. 
Private German cartographic publishers indeed question whether this should be considered a 
“public task”. 
Certain public sector bodies (suc h as the Austrian Mapping Agen cy in the case of maps for 
cyclists) deliberately withdraw from the mark et once private re-users  start offering their 
added-value services and produc ts. Another good example is th at of the CENDOJ (Council of 
the Spanish Judiciary which has the task to care for the publication of case law), which concluded an agreement with legal publishers on  the role of each party in the dissemination 
and re-use of this information. (See 7.5) 
2) The second issue refers to cross-subsidies, where a public sector body would use its “raw” 
information to develop further value-added se rvices under more favourable conditions than 
those offered to competitors.  
In order to ensure fair comp etition and non-discrimination, as pr escribed by Article 10(2) of 
the Directive, if public  bodies re-use their own documents to produce added-va lue services in 
competition with other re-users, equal charges and other conditions should apply to all of 
them. A clear demarcation of what is the public  sector body’s public ta sk, and a separation of 
accounts for public task and market activities of  public sector bodies he lps to ensure this 
objective. This approach has been taken, fo r example, by the UK Met Office. Also, while 
Member States can define the public tasks of public sector bodies, they have to take into 
account certain limits and criteria set by EC law as interpreted by the ECJ. 
7.5. Cooperation PSIH – Re-users  
The responses to the stakeholde r and Member State consultations  and our bilateral contacts 
with stakeholders indicate th at there is frequently a mismatch between the information public 
sector bodies make available  for re-use and the needs of private re-users . This is an area 
for further cooperation on maximising re-use, as th ere is a need for public sector bodies to 
meet the real demands of private operators. Public  sector bodies are interested in investing in 
IT system/infrastructure that provides what re-u sers want. Re-users underlined in the Micus 
Report their willingness to buy more informati on from public sources provided that it is 
delivered under reasonable conditions. In order to meet this demand, PSI holders should focus 
on crucial aspects such as licen sing, pricing, delivery times and provide greater support for 
the re-use of PSI. An interesting example of this is CENDOJ.  
CENDOJ 
 
EN 29   EN The Spanish Council of the Judiciary (CENDOJ) re cently announced that it had entered into 
an agreement with the Spanish Federation of  Legal Publishers on the publication of its 
jurisprudence, agreeing on the c onditions of access to  and re-use by Span ish publishers, in 
accordance with the provisions of the PSI Directiv e. An important aspect of this agreement is 
the clarification of the role of CENDOJ in the dissemination of case law in terms of fulfilling 
its public task mandate. This agreement is bound to give a positive im pulse to the re-use 
business, in particular by de fining the scope and boundaries of public and private markets.50 
7.6. Technological issues 
PSI re-use can very much be facilitated by appropriate “discovery” tools  that make it easy for 
re-users to “find” and “downloa d” the information they require.  Information Asset Registers 
(IARs)  are particularly relevant, as they list th e content and resources held by Public Sector 
Bodies and enable re-users to identify from “one stop shops” what information is held across 
a given country. The UK OPSI website provides  an interesting example by unlocking and 
making available the information assets held across the UK Government. In addition, OPSI 
has also developed a web page where re-users  can request specific datasets held by 
government that they would like released.  
The information assets produced and held by public  sector bodies vary considerably from one 
institution to another, and therefor e the availability of a structured metadata catalogue  of 
their information assets is key to enabling its discovery and making for wider re-use . Whilst 
discussions are currently taking place on the n eed or otherwise to establish Europe-wide 
metadata standards, there is an emerging c onsensus that IARs should be harmonised some 
through some level of standardisation and interoperability . The call for appropriate 
metadata and interoperability standards is no t new, and this task has been undertaken by 
different specific communities to exchange and re-use data. For example, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) standards are the norm for exchanging meteorological 
information. The recent adoption of the INSPIRE Metadata Implementing Rules
51 will 
become the agreed standard for exchanging and re-using geographical information in Europe. 
In addition, not only should the information  be discovered and availa ble for re-use, it should 
also be delivered in such a way that it can be readily  re-used. For example, the Danish 
Government Strategy is that  government data should be based on open and common  
XML standards  wherever possible, thus enabling private re-users to plan for specific data 
formats when designing their IT systems and interfaces.  
The use of Semantic Web Technologies  has been flagged as importa nt in this context, as 
they allow documents to be fully searchable and linkable , not only providing information to 
users but also enabling machine to machine interaction. 
                                                 
50 http://www.epsiplus.net/news/psi_directive_quoted . 
51 http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriSe rv.do?uri=OJ:L:2008:326:0012:0030:EN:PDF . 
 
EN 30   EN 8. O VERVIEW OF RELEVANT EUROPEAN AND INTERNATIONAL PSI- RELATED 
INITIATIVES  
8.1. Bilateral contacts, PSI expert group 
A considerable number of bilateral contacts with publishers, private firms, government 
agencies and commercial associations have b een held to hear the views of the different 
stakeholders, in particular  in the private sector.  
PSI Alliance 
The PSI Alliance is an associa tion of private Public Sector Information re-users across the 
EU. It was established in January 2008. Ov er 15 organisations representing over 200 
companies, including Bisnode, a Microsoft subsidiary, Multimap, an EADS subsidiary, 
Infoterra, GEOkomm, PRIMET and Lursoft have put their weight behind the new 
organisation. The goal of the PSI Alliance is to  encourage the public and private sectors to 
work together effectively, to ensure that PSI ca n assume its proper role as a key contributor to 
a vibrant, information-driven European econo my, offering benefits to the public sector, 
private sector and the end consumer alike. 
Similarly formal consultations with Member Stat es have taken place in the context of the PSI 
Group.52 This group consists of Memb er States officials, local or regional authorities, and 
representatives from private sector organi sations who meet regul arly to exchange good 
practices in PSI re-use  and initiatives supporting PSI re-u se and discuss practical issues 
regarding transposition of the PSI Directive. 
8.2. Awareness-raising actions and studies  under the eContentplus/CIP programmes 
The Commission supports awareness rising, ex change of good practices and networking 
through the eContentplu s programme. The “ ePSIplus Thematic Network ”53 has developed a 
network of correspondents and national experts and brought toge ther a large community of 
PSI stakeholders, raising awareness in the Memb er States of PSI issues and facilitating 
implementation of the Directive. It  has a comprehensive website, which monitors and 
reports on PSI-related issues , and has held meetings across EU Member States to raise 
awareness of PSI re-use. In addition, 15 specific  thematic meetings have  taken place, covering 
key issues such as law and re gulation, public sector culture, PSI re-use business, financial 
impact, information management, standards an d data quality. In June 2008, it organised a 
Conference entitled ‘PSI Re-use – Who Take s Action Next?’, and subsequently submitted 
“ePSIplus Recommendations and Supporting Evidence”  to the Commission on the review 
of the PSI Directive. The ePSIplus thematic network will be replaced in February 2009 by the 
European Public Sector Information Platform , which will carry on undertaking PSI 
awareness raising and exchange of good practices. 
Effective deployment of the re-use policy by Me mber States will have to be accompanied by 
projects and support measures under the Co mpetitiveness Innovation Programme (CIP), 
                                                 
52 http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/policy/psi/psi_group/index_en.htm . 
53 http://www.epsiplus.net/ . 
 
EN 31   EN within the part of the CIP de aling with digital content, wh ich will replace the eContentplus 
programme in 2009.54 
In 2009, an exercise is being launched to assess the existence of exclusive agreements  
concluded by public sector bodies within EU Member States.  This will help the 
Commission to investigate the existence of such arrangements  in the Member States, 
particularly in sectors where such practices have been the tradition.  
In addition, a thematic network on the “Legal asp ects of Public Sector Information”  will 
be set up. The aim is to identify and discuss lega l barriers to access to and re-use of PSI in the 
digital environment and to suggest ways of overcoming them.  
8.3. Associated Community initiatives  
Various institutions and stakehol ders have flagged that greater  cooperation between European 
bodies and frameworks, notably the INSPIRE Directive and the Shared Environmental Information System (SEIS) initiative, shoul d be established by the Commission to help 
determine what action and initiatives are needed  to improve discovery and access to the full 
range of PSI. 
8.3.1. SEIS – Shared Environmental Information System 
SEIS
55 is a collaborative initiative of the European Commission and the European 
Environment Agency (EEA) desi gned to establish, together with the Member States, an 
integrated and shared EU-wide environmental in formation system. This system would tie in 
with all existing data gathering and information flows relating to EU environmental policies and legislation. It will be base d on technologies such as internet  and satellite systems and thus 
make environmental information more readily available  and easier to access and re-use.  
The underlying aim of SEIS is also to move away from paper-based reporting to a system 
where information is managed as close as possibl e to its source and made available to users in 
an open and transparent way.  
SEIS could be a considerable PSI asset:  it will facilitate access to and re-use of 
environmental information and will boost the deve lopment of intelligent e-services by taking 
advantage of data-sharing infrastructures  and readily available information.  
8.3.2. INSPIRE Directive 
INSPIRE
56 is a Directive (2007/2/EC ) of the European Parlia ment and of the Council 
establishing an Infrastructure for Spatial Inform ation in the European Community . The 
purpose of such an infrastructure is to assist policy-making in relation to policies  and 
activities that may have a direct or indirect impact on the environment. The Directive entered 
into force on 15 May 2007 and must be transp osed in all Member States by 15 May 2009.  
To ensure that the spatial data infrastructures  of the Member States are compatible and 
usable across borders  and in a Community context, the Directive requires common 
Implementing Rules to be adopted in a number of  specific areas. This requirement is one of 
                                                 
54 http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/ict_psp/index_en.htm . 
55 http://ec.europa.eu/environment/seis/index.htm . 
56 http://eur-lex.europa.eu/JOHtml.do ?uri=OJ:L:2007:108:SOM:EN:HTML . 
 
EN 32   EN the provisions to help raise awareness and incr ease visibility of all in itiatives promoting the 
use and re-use of data. Ar ticles 11(1) and 15 of the INSPIRE Directive  require direct access 
to be given to data and services  from the Member State and from the Communities. This 
obligation is a big step forward towards improving the efficiency of the use of geospatial data 
for the purposes of cross-border business activit y on a pan-European level, and it is also 
expected to lead to further developments  in the geographical information market. 
8.4. International activities (OECD) 
The OECD has been looking at the opportunities stemming from the re-use of PSI in the 
digital age, and at the ch allenges involved, since 2006. Th e OECD Working Party on the 
Information Economy drew up a comprehensive report on PSI in 2006,57 and, more recently, 
the OECD Committee for Scientific and T echnological Policy (CSTP) approved a 
Recommendation of the Council for Enhanced Access and more effective Use of Public 
Sector Information .58 These include a se t of principles which in specific cases go beyond the 
requirements of the Directive. For example, it strongly encourages marginal cost pricing for 
PSI. The CSTP will have to monitor implementation of the Recommendation.  
                                                 
57 http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/10/22/36481524.pdf . 
58 http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/0/27/40826024.pdf . 
 
EN 33   EN ANNEX  
Directive 2003/98/EC on the Re-use of Public Sector Information – Means 
of transposition  
I. Specific PSI Legislation 
Member State National measures transposing the Directive 
Belgium (BE) A series of federal and regional measures transposing the PSI Directive in 
particular regions (2005-2008) 
Cyprus (CY) Act establishing rules governing the re-use of existing information held by 
public sector bodies (2006); Decree pursuant to Article 3(2) of the Law on 
PSI (2007) 
Germany (DE) Federal law transposing the PSI Dire ctive – Re-use of Information Act 
(IWG Informationsweiterverwendungsgesetz) (2006) 
Spain (ES) Law No 37/2007 on the re-use of public sector information (2007) 
Greece (GR) Law No 3448 on the re-use of public sector information and the regulation 
of issues within the competency of the Ministry of Interior, Public 
Administration and Decentralisa tion (2006, amended in 2007) 
Ireland (IE) The European Communities (Re-use of  Public Sector Information) 
Regulations (2005) 
Italy (IT)  Legislative Decree No 36 of 24 January implementing Directive 2003/98 on 
the re-use of public sector information (2006) 
Luxembourg (LU) Law on the re-use of public sector information (2007) 
Malta (MT) European Union Act (Cap. 460) Re-use of  Public Sector Information Order 
( 2007) 
Romania (RO) Law 109/2007 regarding re-use of public  institutions information (2007); 
Law on access to Information of Public Character (2003) 
United Kingdom 
(UK) The Re-use of public sector information regulations (2005) 
 
 
 
EN 34   EN  
II. Amendments to the existing legal framework 
Member State National measures transposing the Directive 
Austria (AT) A series of federal measures transposing the PSI Directive in particular 
Länder  (2005-2007) 
Bulgaria (BU) Law amending Access to Public Information Act (2007)  
Czech Republic 
(CZ) Law amending Free Access to Information Act No 1061/999 (2006) 
Denmark (DK) Act on the re-use of public sector info rmation No 596/24.6 (2005, amended 
in 2008); Public Administration Act No 571/19.12 (1985); 
Access to Public Administrative Do cuments Act No 572/19.12 (1985) 
Finland (FI) Act on Transparency in Government (1999); Act on Criteria for Charges 
Payable to the State (1992); Act on Sovereignty of the Island of Åland 
(1991) 
France (FR) Act No 78-753, as amended by Order 2 005-650 of 6 June 2005, on freedom 
of access to administrative documents an d the re-use of public information; 
Decree No 20051755 (2005) 
Lithuania (LT) Law on access to informati on from central and local government institutions 
(2006); Law on State Registers (2004) 
Latvia (LV) Amendments to the act on freedom of information (2006); Act on freedom 
of information (1998) 
Netherlands (NL) Amendment of the government information act (WOB) and a number of 
other acts in connection with impl ementation of Directive 2003/98/EC 
(2005); Explanatory Memorandum (attached to the above amendment) 
Portugal (PT) Law No 46/2007 transposing the PSI Directive (2007) 
Sweden (SE) Regulation on the re-use of public sector information (2008) and a series of 
existing legislation, including Freedom of the Press Order (1949); Fees and 
Charges Order (1992); Administrative Procedures Act (1986); 
Constitutional Act (1989) 
Slovenia (SI) Law on the re-use of public sector in formation (2005) and amendments to 
the Law on access to Information of Public Character (2005); Law on access to Information of Public Character (2003) 
 
 
EN 35   EN  
III. No amendments to the existing legal fr amework regarding transposition of the PSI 
Directive 
Member State National measures transposing the Directive 
Estonia (EE) The Public Informati on Act (consolidated text March 2003) 
Hungary (HU) A series of existing national measures, including Constitution of the 
Republic of Hungary (1949, amende d 1989); Data Protection Act (1992, 
amended in 2003 and in 2005) 
Act on equal treatment and promoting equality of opportunity (2003); Act 
on freedom of electronic information (2005) 
Poland (PL) A series of existing national measures, including Act on Freedom of 
Business Activity (2004); Act on Access to Public Information (2001); Constitution of the Republic of Pola nd (1997); Code of Administrative 
Procedure (1960) 
Slovak Republic 
(SK) A series of existing legislation, incl uding The freedom of Information Act 
211/2000 (2000); Code of Administra tive procedure (amended in 2002 and 
in 2003) 
 
Member State 
of the EEA  National measures related to the PSI  
 Directive  
Iceland 
 Law No 161/2006 amending the information law No 50/1996 
 
Liechtenstein 
 Law No 172/016 on the further use of public sector information 
implementing the PSI Directive (Informationsweiterverwendungsgesetz; 
IWG) (2008)  
Norway 
 Act 19 May 2006 no 16 relating to right of access to documents held by the 
public administration and public undertakings