Policy Briefing — September 5, 2025
Cloud and AI teams must finish EU Data Act switching rehearsals so workloads can satisfy Article 23 portability rights when the regulation applies on 12 September 2025.
Executive briefing: The EU Data Act becomes applicable on , enforcing Articles 23–30 on cloud switching, interoperability, and smart-contract controls. Providers across the Union should rehearse exit plans for AI platforms—ensuring models, embeddings, and training corpora can migrate within the thirty-day switching window while preserving EU AI Act documentation and systemic-risk evidence.
Regulatory checkpoints
- Article 23 switching rights. Business users must be able to move data, digital assets, and related metadata between data-processing services within statutory deadlines and without unjustified service interruption.
- Fee transparency. Article 25 requires providers to disclose switching charges up front and phase them out entirely by 2027.
- Smart-contract safeguards. Article 30 mandates safe termination and interruption mechanisms for smart contracts governing data access—critical for AI systems that automate dataset ingestion.
Control alignment
- Asset inventories. Map which AI services count as “data processing services” and tag dependencies such as vector databases, feature stores, and model registries.
- EU AI Act linkage. Ensure Article 53 technical documentation and systemic-risk evidence travel with workloads during switching rehearsals.
Detection and response priorities
- Test automated export tooling for training data, annotations, and model weights; flag gaps where manual intervention is still needed.
- Validate that logging, audit trails, and access controls remain intact after migration so EU AI Act oversight is unaffected.
- Monitor vendor compliance with the statutory fee glide path and escalate non-compliance to procurement and legal.
Enablement moves
- Run joint rehearsals with strategic EU customers to practice coordinated switching within thirty days.
- Update contract templates to incorporate Article 23–30 clauses, including dispute resolution for switching failures.
- Brief board risk committees on the combined EU Data Act and EU AI Act evidence requirements for AI platforms operating in Europe.