Data Governance and Neutral Data Intermediation: Legal Properties and Potential Semantic Constraints

The EU Regulation 2022/868 (Data Governance Act) designs a European data governance framework to facilitate data sharing, shaping the role of the Data Intermediation Service Provider. This paper aims to clarify, from a levelism perspective, the main features of the Data Governance Act framing it as a macro-level model, and to explore the data intermediation service provider’s role as one of multiple subjective stand-points in this data governance model. In doing so, it attempts to capture the main legal properties of data intermediation service and it brings them to the fore, identifying potential semantic constraints that may need to be addressed when engineering a data governance model in line with legally desirable outcomes. This paper builds on the existing cross-sectoral literature at the intersection of law and technology by relying on the research method of legal analysis and lays the groundwork for implementing a data governance model that integrates and consolidates different levels, dimensions, and facets of the in-force legal framework.