The EU Data Act and Policymaking in the European Union

This book investigates the internal dynamics and mechanisms that shaped one of the European Union’s most ambitious and far-reaching pieces of digital legislation: the Data Act. While the importance of data to the economy and society has been widely acknowledged, the policy processes behind data legislation remain underexplored. This study closes that gap by applying the Multiple Streams Approach to understand how the Data Act progressed from a largely absent issue to a legislative priority, and how it was rapidly adopted despite its complexity and scope.

Johannes Niklas Holtz is Researcher at the Institute of Political Science, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany and Digital Policy Expert at DATEV.