The legislative journey of the Interoperable Europe Act proposal

On 18 November 2023, the European Parliament and the presidency of the Council, held by Spain until December 2023, have reached a provisional agreement on the proposed legislation regarding measures on a high level of public sector interoperability across the EU, commonly known as the Interoperable Europe Act. The deal has come almost one year after the adoption of the proposal by the European Commission.

 The proposal follows Member States’ call to strengthen European interoperability cooperation and digital transformation more broadly. The Act also takes stock – and makes tangible – the political commitments of the two most ambitious ministerial declarations in the area: the 2017 Tallinn Declaration on eGovernment and the 2020 Berlin Declaration on Digital Society and Value-Based Digital Government. The Act also summons the conclusions of the European Council of 9 June 2020 on Shaping Europe’s Digital Future. Bolstering the interoperability of public services in Europe is a cornerstone of the work on the Commission’s priority to create ‘A Europe fit for the digital age’ and it is enshrined in the Communication on ‘2030 Digital Compass: the European way for the Digital Decade’.

Over the past years, digital government and data experts have developed wide-ranging common interoperability cooperation practices based on the current European Interoperability Framework (EIF). Nevertheless, various limitations have been raised due to its cooperative approach which is entirely voluntary. Therefore, the goal of the Interoperable Europe Act will be to fill this gap by setting up a new cooperation framework for EU public administrations to ensure the seamless delivery of public services across borders, and to provide for support measures promoting innovation and enhancing skills and knowledge exchange. The new Regulation will also establish an interoperability governance structure with a view to creating an ecosystem of shared interoperability solutions for the EU’s public sector. This way, public administrations across Europe will be able to contribute to and re-use such solutions, innovate together and create added value.

Following the provisional agreement, the text will now need to be confirmed by the European Parliament and the Council, and undergo legal-linguistic revision before formal adoption by the co-legislators. Therefore, it is expected to enter into force in Q2 2024.

What are the main changes to the Interoperable Europe Act proposal brought by the co-legislators?

The provisional agreement has maintained the general thrust of the Commission’s proposal, especially when it comes to the sharing and reuse of interoperability solutions and the creation of a multi-level governance framework steered by the Interoperable Europe Board, among others. However, discussions held in the trilogues between the co-legislators and the European Commission have led to various amendments to the original proposal, including:

• The objectives and conditions of the mandatory interoperability assessments foreseen under Article 3 have been clarified, for both Union entities and public sector bodies. This was done to prevent unnecessary duplication of efforts between the EU and the national level, by highlighting that an interoperability assessment is to be carried out only once for the same set of binding requirements on the cross-border interoperability of one or several trans-European digital public services. To support Member States in performing the interoperability assessments and drafting the relevant reports, a new Annex with a common checklist has also been introduced. 
• Provisions related to regulatory sandboxes[1], namely Articles 11 and 12, have been expanded to ensure that they are aligned with those included in the Artificial Intelligence Act and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Such provisions will guarantee consistency with all EU legislations.
• The Interoperable Europe Board, which will be set up as per Article 15, has been given an even more central role in the new governance structure set up by the proposal, which will allow it to adopt guidelines on the provisions related to the interoperability assessment and draw relevant conclusions from the various assessment reports.

The impact on NIFO

The National Interoperability Framework Observatory (NIFO), under DG DIGIT’s mandate, has been supporting Member States for several years, notably through the monitoring mechanism of the EIF. Thus, with the entry into force of the Interoperable Europe Act, the European Commission, in alignment with NIFO, will also contribute to the monitoring of the Act itself. 

Indeed, as stipulated by Article 20, the European Commission “shall monitor the progress of the development of cross-border interoperable public services to be delivered or managed electronically in the Union. The monitoring shall give priority to the reuse of existing international, Union and national monitoring data and to automated data collection” in order to reduce the reporting burden on the Member States. More specifically, the European Commission shall monitor the following elements: 

• The implementation of the EIF by the Member States;
• The take-up of the interoperability solutions in different sectors, across the Member States, and at local level;
• The development of open-source solutions for the public services, public sector innovation and the cooperation with GovTech actors in the field of cross-border interoperable public services to be delivered or managed electronically in the Union.

In this regard, the European Commission is working on the creation of a new interoperability monitoring mechanism, which builds on the successes of the EIF monitoring mechanism, but with the aim to create a more user-friendly instrument that is practical for all European countries. In addition, the new mechanism will deepen the synergies with other existing monitoring mechanisms, such as the Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI) and the eGovernment Benchmark to meet the objectives set in the Digital Decade Policy Programme 2030. 

The finalisation of the theoretical framework for the new interoperability monitoring mechanism is planned for Q1 2024, which will be followed by a piloting phase with voluntary Member States in Q2 2024. The first data collection for the monitoring of the Act will be launched during autumn 2024. 

Current initiatives and future actions

Since the proposal for an Interoperable Europe Act, the European Commission is committed to provide further training and support material on the use of the EIF and on the available Interoperable Europe solutions at Member States’ disposal. In this context, an EIF training material slide-deck was published in April 2023. This material is available in English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish. It serves as a reference document meant to provide guidance and support to the 27 EU Member States, as well as Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Ukraine, on how to improve the interoperability of their public services. 

Furthermore, in order to anticipate the peer review provision set in Article 14 of the Interoperable Europe Act, the Commission has been organising several working meetings with selected European countries in a “twinning exercise” to create a dialogue among public administrations and provide support in specific areas of digitalisation and interoperability to those that need it the most from the community. Such an initiative also helps European countries improve their scores on the EIF implementation and expand their knowledge and expertise on interoperability-related topics. 

Taking a look beyond the mere proposal text, other actions have been put in place to ensure and foster cross-border interoperability in Europe. For example, the European Interoperability Framework for Smart Cities and Communities (EIF4SCC) was launched in 2021 with the objective of providing leaders of local EU administrations with definitions, principles, recommendations, practical use cases on interoperability, drawn from cities and communities from around Europe and beyond, along the lines of the EIF. It also provides a common model to facilitate the delivery of services to the public across domains, cities, regions and borders. Moreover, the Better Regulation Guidelines, last updated in July 2023, offer recommendations and requirements to be adopted throughout the EU regulatory cycle. Such guidelines include elements of interoperability (e.g., Tool #28 on Digital-ready policymaking) and may be replicated at Member State level in order to ensure alignment with EU legislations.