The EU Council's 'Coreper' committee (EU Committee of Member States' Permanent Representatives) backed the EU Open Data rules as proposed by the European Commission. The revision of the 2003 Public Sector Information Directive would make all generally accessible (that is, non-personal) public sector information available for re-use.

The European Commission welcomed the endorsement of EU Open Data rules by the EU Committee of Member States' Permanent Representatives. The proposed new rules now need to be formally approved by the European Parliament. In particular, the EU member states representatives gave a green light to the revision of the 2003 Public Sector Information Directive, that would make all generally accessible (that is, non-personal) public sector information available for re-use. Recently, the Commission also launched in beta version its Open Data Portal.

According to the Commission, when fully implemented, proposed new rules would create a genuine right to re-use public information, not present in the original 2003 Directive; Expand the reach of the Directive to include libraries, museums and archives; Establish that public sector bodies can charge at maximum the marginal cost for reproduction, provision and dissemination of the information; Oblige public sector bodies to be more transparent about charging rules; and encourage the availability of data in open machine-readable formats.

Public Sector Information refers to non-personal data produced, stored or collected by public sector bodies. Developers, programmers, businesses and citizens will be able to get and re-use public sector data at zero or very low cost in most cases. They will also have access to more exciting and inspirational content, for example including materials in national museums, libraries and archives. Studies show that wider availability of public data could boost economic activity by tens of billions of euros per year across the EU.