Legal Building Blocks

According to the DSSC Blueprint, the Regulatory Compliance and Contractual Framework building blocks aim to enhance understanding of compliance and contract issues within a data space:

• Regulatory Compliance: This building block highlights key elements for ensuring compliance within the data space and outlines actions to be undertaken by data space participants or potential policies that the governance authority shall consider creating. It takes a practical approach by focusing on legal triggers, i.e. elements, criteria or events that have occurred in a particular context of a data space and signals that a specific legal framework must or should be applied.

• Contractual Framework: This building block provides a functional overview of essential contracts in a data space, categorising agreements according to their objects: institutional agreements, data sharing agreements, and service agreements. For each category of agreements, it highlights horizontal issues that are likely to emerge or are common to all sectors (e.g., the requirement of fairness in data contracts).

These building blocks are designed to provide a basic approach to organising compliance within a data space, regardless of its specific characteristics. Regulatory and contractual requirements vary across sectors and depend on business, governance, and technical infrastructure decisions. Consequently, these blocks are not intended to provide exhaustive detail or all-encompassing templates. They do, however, provide references to relevant resources and further reading and offer some initial guidance on navigating the legal landscape for data spaces. Future editions will include additional information, guidance from relevant authorities, and new tools and templates as they become available.