ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, has made digital a political priority, with the clear objective of building a “ Europe adapted to the digital age ». As the European elections approach, Europe has a card to play when it comes to digital sovereignty and responsibility, but it must not put up a fight.
The proposed new framework for access to financial data (IFAD for financial data access), on which the European Parliament must vote on April 18, clearly illustrates the difficulty of the exercise. Placed at the heart of the digital finance strategy of the European Union (EU), this draft regulation has a laudable objective: to regulate the implementation of “open finance” [finance ouverte] at the European level. But it can actually backfire on the consumer.
Concretely, the FIDA regulation will give individuals and companies the possibility of authorizing third parties “data users” – for example, financial institutions or digital platforms – to have access to and use their data held by financial institutions, including banks and insurers. All or almost all of this data could be affected by this regulation.
The Commission’s wish is to promote competition in the financial sector while stimulating the creation of more innovative products and services. It is a meritorious logic that it has followed, often successfully in other sectors, for the benefit of the consumer. However, in reality, increased competition is not necessarily beneficial, neither for the consumer nor for Europe – and IFAD could be the demonstration of this.
Guardrails
This project firstly poses a threat to the digital sovereignty of the EU. This opening of consumer data would allow large technology platforms, in particular the American digital giants, Gafam (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft), to access it. They could then use and resell them, thus entering into direct competition with European players while weakening the protection of European consumers.
It is therefore essential that the regulation provides safeguards against these non-European digital giants. This is particularly an issue in the insurance sector, a long-term activity that is already highly regulated and an essential link in the economic chain. The FIDA regulation then poses a risk of demutualization that the designers of this text undoubtedly did not anticipate.
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