The European Union’s Data Act, published on December 22, 2023, sets new terms for businesses leaving a cloud supplier: contracts must spell out the exit arrangements, and covered switching charges will disappear from January 12, 2027. The rules concern providers serving customers in the EU, wherever the provider is based. They are not an immediate right to a free move. The regulation is scheduled to apply from September 12, 2025, and its fee ban does not remove every cost of changing systems. [S1]
The European Parliament described the aim in November as giving cloud customers more power to negotiate and avoid being locked into one provider. Article 25 of the final law requires a written contract, available before signing, that identifies the data and digital assets customers can take with them and the supplier’s assistance during the move. Article 26 adds disclosure of transfer methods, formats and known technical limits. A buyer can use those details to examine an exit before committing to a service, rather than relying on a general promise of portability. [S1][S2]
Article 29 sets January 12, 2027 as the end of switching charges for covered services, including the fees a supplier charges to move data out over its network. But the law’s definition excludes ordinary service fees and early termination penalties. Its explanatory text also leaves customers able to pay a third party for migration help. A business cannot treat the ban as a promise that ending a fixed-term contract or hiring an implementation team will cost nothing. [S1]
Some services sit outside the fee ban. Article 31 exempts services whose main features are mostly custom-built for one customer, or whose components are all developed for that customer, where they are not offered at broad commercial scale through the supplier’s catalogue. That is a narrower exception than calling a service customised. Time-limited, non-production services supplied for testing and evaluation are exempt from the switching chapter altogether. The provider must explain the applicable exemptions before the contract is concluded. [S1]
A transfer starts after the notice period, not when the customer first asks to leave. The contract’s notice period may be no longer than two months; the standard transfer period then has a ceiling of 30 calendar days. The supplier must provide reasonable assistance and maintain business continuity during that transfer. If the 30-day period is technically unworkable, the supplier must justify an alternative of no more than seven months. The customer can also extend the transfer period once. Separately, the contract must allow at least 30 calendar days for retrieving data after the agreed transfer period ends. [S1]
Portability does not mean receiving a copy of the supplier’s software. Exportable data includes customer-generated inputs, outputs and metadata, while excluding provider or third-party material protected by intellectual property rights or trade secrets. For non-exempt basic infrastructure services, suppliers must take reasonable measures to help restore comparable functionality after a move to the same service type. Other covered cloud services must provide open interfaces free of charge to facilitate switching. Neither requirement obliges suppliers to develop new technology or hand over protected digital assets. [S1]
For a retailer or distributor planning a move, the law’s division of work is worth settling with both suppliers. The regulation’s explanation assigns extraction into a machine-readable format to the departing supplier, but uploading into the new environment to the customer and receiving supplier unless a professional transition service has been arranged. All parties must cooperate. The outgoing supplier’s export obligation does not, by itself, put someone in charge of loading those files into the replacement service. [S1]
Source documents
- Regulation (EU) 2023/2854 — original Official Journal text, 22 December 2023 (archived 3 October 2026)https://web.archive.org/web/20261003060643id_/https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2023/2854/oj/eng
- Parliament backs plans for better access to, and use of, datahttps://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20231106IPR09025/data-act-meps-back-new-rules-for-fair-access-to-and-use-of-industrial-data