Regulation (EU) 2023/2854 (Data Act): Official Text, Structure and How to Read It

Entry into force and application are two separate dates, both set by Article 50 of Regulation (EU) 2023/2854.

The Regulation has 119 recitals, 11 chapters and 50 articles, no annex and seven corrigenda, and as of 5 November 2026 no act amending it has been adopted. Its articles name their addressees one provision at a time, from the manufacturer of a connected product to the provider of a data processing service; what the Regulation requires of each role is explained on the EU Data Act overview page.

This page treats the Data Act as a legal document: its identifiers, where the authentic text and its 24 language versions sit, how the recitals, chapters and articles are built, how a provision is cited, how the act was adopted, what the seven corrigenda changed, the Commission's powers under Articles 45 and 46, and which version is in force on 5 November 2026.

The Official Text of Regulation (EU) 2023/2854 at a Glance

Regulation (EU) 2023/2854, the Data Act, is identified by CELEX number 32023R2854, by the European Legislation Identifier (ELI) http://data.europa.eu/eli/reg/2023/2854/oj and by the Official Journal reference OJ L, 2023/2854, 22.12.2023. Table 1 collects every identifier, date and status of the act in one block.

Table 1: Regulation (EU) 2023/2854 as of 5 November 2026; source: EUR-Lex and the Publications Office.

Full Title, Legal Basis and Legal Form

The full title is "Regulation (EU) 2023/2854 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 13 December 2023 on harmonised rules on fair access to and use of data and amending Regulation (EU) 2017/2394 and Directive (EU) 2020/1828 (Data Act)". The title names the two acts that the Data Act amends in its final provisions: Regulation (EU) 2017/2394 on consumer protection cooperation (Article 47) and Directive (EU) 2020/1828 on representative actions (Article 48). The heading carries the note "Text with EEA relevance", and the citations give Article 114 TFEU as the legal basis.

The legal form is a regulation, which Article 50 declares "binding in its entirety and directly applicable in all Member States". Its rules therefore apply without any national act repeating them. National laws designate the competent authorities under Article 37 and lay down the penalty rules under Article 40, so a national Data Act law is an implementing act around the Regulation, never a transposition of it.

CELEX Number, ELI and Official Journal Reference

The Data Act was published on 22 December 2023 in the L series of the Official Journal under the number 2023/2854, which is why its reference carries no page number. The CELEX number 32023R2854 and the ELI both resolve to the same EUR-Lex record of the adopted act. The CELEX number 52022PC0068 belongs to the Commission proposal and never identifies the Regulation itself.

Publication fixed the date of entry into force: Article 50, first paragraph, sets it on the twentieth day following publication, which was 11 January 2024. The publication date differs from the date in the title, 13 December 2023, which is the date of signature in Strasbourg. Copies that give 13 December 2023 as the publication date confuse the two.

Where to Find and Download the Official Text

The authentic Data Act is the Official Journal publication on EUR-Lex, reached through the ELI http://data.europa.eu/eli/reg/2023/2854/oj or the CELEX number 32023R2854, and every other copy, including article mirrors and PDF guides, is a reproduction without legal force of its own. The EUR-Lex page of the Regulation carries the text in all 24 official language versions, as web text and as PDF, together with the seven corrigenda. A reader who quotes the Data Act in a contract, a request or a complaint takes the wording from that page and cites the Official Journal reference rather than the address of a copy.

Language Versions and Official Short Titles

The language versions carry their own short titles: "Datenverordnung" in German, "règlement sur les données" in French, "Reglamento de Datos" in Spanish and "regolamento sui dati" in Italian. The official record holds these further short titles:

• Portuguese: Regulamento dos Dados
• Greek: κανονισμός για τα δεδομένα
• Maltese: l-Att dwar id-Data
• Croatian: Akt o podacima
• Slovenian: akt o podatkih
• Polish: akt w sprawie danych
• Czech: nařízení o datech
• Slovak: akt o údajoch
• Hungarian: adatrendelet
• Romanian: Regulamentul privind datele
• Bulgarian: Акт за данните
• Estonian: andmemäärus
• Latvian: Datu akts
• Lithuanian: Duomenų aktas

The act number 2023/2854 stays the same in every language version, so a search by number finds the act whatever its short title.

The Official Summary and the Commission Pages beside the Text

EUR-Lex publishes an official summary of the Data Act, LEGISSUM 4723374, last updated on 9 September 2024, so it does not yet reflect the later application dates or the pending amendment proposal. The EUR-Lex summary is a reading aid, not the text, and a summary sentence is never quoted as law.

The Commission's Data Act policy page, last updated on 5 November 2026, states entry into force on 11 January 2024 and application from 12 September 2025. Its frequently asked questions (FAQ), version 1.4 of 22 January 2026, are the only version listed in the Commission library as of 5 November 2026; they are non-binding, and their introduction swaps two digits of the act number, so the number is always taken from the Official Journal. The FAQ and the other Commission documents are listed under official Data Act guidance.

How the Regulation Is Built: Citations, Recitals and Enacting Terms

Regulation (EU) 2023/2854 has three parts: the citations naming the legal basis and the opinions received, 119 numbered recitals giving the reasons, and the enacting terms in 11 chapters and 50 articles, followed by the closing formula signed in Strasbourg on 13 December 2023. There are no sections inside the chapters and no annex. The closing formula carries the signatures of the President of the European Parliament and the President of the Council.

The 119 Recitals and How They Relate to the Articles

The 119 recitals come before Article 1 and explain why each rule exists, often with detail the article itself leaves out. Three recitals show how the reasons attach to the articles:

• Recital 81: data processing services fall into the delivery models Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS), with variations such as storage and database as a service, the services that Chapter VI governs.
• Recital 112: the sui generis right of Directive 96/9/EC should not apply to databases of data obtained or generated by the physical components of a connected product and a related service, the reason for Article 43.
• Recital 118: the consultation of the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) and the European Data Protection Board (EDPB), which the citations do not mention.

A recital is cited by its number, as "recital 81 of Regulation (EU) 2023/2854", and never as an article. A quotation from a recital explains a rule; the obligation itself is always quoted from the article.

Eleven Chapters, Fifty Articles and No Annex

The enacting terms run from Chapter I, General provisions (Articles 1 and 2), to Chapter XI, Final provisions (Articles 44 to 50). Chapters IV, VII and X have one article each (Articles 13, 32 and 43). Table 2 gives every chapter title and article range; what each article covers is set out on the article index among the section pages below.

Table 2: Chapters of Regulation (EU) 2023/2854; the content of each article is on the article index.

Chapter XI holds the rules on other Union acts (Article 44), delegated acts (Article 45), the committee procedure (Article 46), the two amendments to consumer-law acts (Articles 47 and 48), evaluation and review (Article 49) and entry into force and application (Article 50). The two consumer-law amendments of Articles 47 and 48 belong to the enforcement rules explained under Data Act enforcement.

How to Read and Cite Regulation (EU) 2023/2854

A Data Act provision is cited from the largest to the smallest unit, article, paragraph, point and subparagraph, with the act named once: "Article 25(2)(a) of Regulation (EU) 2023/2854". The same order holds in every chapter, so a citation of a point always names its article and paragraph first, and the act is named in full the first time it is cited.

Citing Articles, Paragraphs, Points and Subparagraphs

Articles carry Arabic numbers, paragraphs numbers in brackets, points lower-case letters in brackets and, inside a point, Roman numerals, as in Article 25(2)(c)(ii). Two forms from the text show the pattern:

• Points in a list: Article 13(4) lists three terms that are always unfair as points (a) to (c), and Article 13(5) lists seven terms presumed unfair as points (a) to (g).
• Subparagraphs: Article 7(1) has a second subparagraph, cited as "Article 7(1), second subparagraph", the passage that two corrigenda correct in the Dutch and Danish texts.

Article 50 has unnumbered paragraphs: the first sets entry into force, the second application, the third to sixth the staggered dates for Article 3(1), Chapter III and Chapter IV, and the last declares the Regulation directly applicable. A date citation therefore names the paragraph in words, such as "Article 50, third paragraph" for the design obligation of Article 3(1). The dates of the staggered paragraphs form a timeline of their own, and each date with its provision is in the Data Act timeline.

Reading a Provision with Its Recitals, Definitions and Cross-References

A provision is read with the definitions of Article 2, the recitals that explain it and the articles it refers to, because Data Act rules often work only through a cross-reference. Article 2 holds 43 definitions, and a definition can be limited to certain articles: "exportable data" (Article 2(38)) is defined for the purpose of Articles 23 to 31 and Article 35 only. The full list of defined terms is on the definitions page among the section pages below.

Nine of the 43 definitions are pure cross-references to other acts. "Personal data" (Article 2(3)) points to Regulation (EU) 2016/679, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), "trade secret" (Article 2(18)) to Directive (EU) 2016/943, "microenterprise" and "small enterprise" (Article 2(26) and (25)) to Recommendation 2003/361/EC, and "harmonised standard" (Article 2(43)) to Regulation (EU) No 1025/2012. A reader of such a provision opens the other act as well.

The text alone does not say which duty applies to which organisation in a given case: the answer depends on the role, the product or service and the date the product was placed on the market or the contract concluded. Turning the articles into compliance steps for manufacturers, data holders, cloud providers, users and public bodies is the task of the Data Act compliance checklist.

How the Regulation Was Adopted: Procedure 2022/0047(COD)

The Data Act was adopted under the ordinary legislative procedure 2022/0047(COD), which ran from the Commission proposal COM(2022) 68 of 23 February 2022 to publication in the Official Journal on 22 December 2023. The procedure file is kept in the European Parliament's Legislative Observatory, and footnote 4 of the Regulation records the Parliament's position and the Council's decision.

From Commission Proposal to Signature in Strasbourg

The procedure took 22 months from proposal to publication, with six dated steps after the proposal:

1. 14 March 2023: the European Parliament's plenary mandate for interinstitutional negotiations.
2. 14 July 2023: confirmation of the text agreed in the interinstitutional negotiations.
3. 9 November 2023: the European Parliament's position at first reading.
4. 27 November 2023: the decision of the Council.
5. 13 December 2023: signature in Strasbourg.
6. 22 December 2023: publication in the Official Journal.

The lead committee in the European Parliament was the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE). The Commission proposal COM(2022) 68, CELEX 52022PC0068, is a historical document: it records the starting point of the negotiations, while only the adopted text binds.

Opinions Cited in the Preamble

The citations list three opinions: the European Central Bank (OJ C 402, 19.10.2022, p. 5), the European Economic and Social Committee (OJ C 365, 23.9.2022, p. 18) and the Committee of the Regions (OJ C 375, 30.9.2022, p. 112). The EDPS and the EDPB delivered their opinion on 4 May 2022, which recital 118 records.

Seven Corrigenda, One of Them in English

Seven corrigenda to Regulation (EU) 2023/2854 have been published between 9 December 2024 and 30 October 2026, numbered 32023R2854R(01) to R(07), and only the first changes the English text. Corrigendum R(01) (OJ L, 2024/90790, 9.12.2024) corrects all language versions: in Article 48, the point added to Annex I to Directive (EU) 2020/1828 becomes "(69)" instead of "68.", the number under which the Data Act is listed in that annex.

The other six corrigenda correct single language versions, as Table 3 shows. A corrigendum corrects the published wording; it is not an amendment of the Regulation.

Table 3: Corrigenda to Regulation (EU) 2023/2854, Publications Office records checked on 5 November 2026.

Delegated and Implementing Acts under Articles 45 and 46

Regulation (EU) 2023/2854 lets the Commission add detail in two ways: delegated acts under Article 45, which the European Parliament and the Council can block, and implementing acts adopted under the committee procedure of Article 46. Both articles sit in Chapter XI, the final provisions of the Regulation.

The Commission's Delegated Powers (Article 45)

Article 45 confers the power to adopt delegated acts on the Commission for two provisions only, Article 29(7) and Article 33(2), for an indeterminate period from 11 January 2024. Article 29(7) covers a monitoring mechanism through which the Commission checks that switching charges are reduced and withdrawn by the deadlines of Article 29, and Article 33(2) covers the further specification of the essential requirements for the interoperability of participants in data spaces. The charges and their deadlines themselves are explained under Data Act switching charges.

Before adopting a delegated act, the Commission consults experts designated by each Member State (Article 45(4)), and it notifies an adopted act to the European Parliament and the Council at the same time (Article 45(5)). A delegated act under Article 29(7) or Article 33(2) enters into force only if neither institution objects within three months of notification, a period extendable by three months (Article 45(6)). Either institution may revoke the delegation at any time (Article 45(3)). The Commission proposal COM(2025) 837 would add a further delegated power; it is pending as of 5 November 2026.

The Committee Procedure for Implementing Acts (Article 46)

Article 46 assigns the Commission the committee established by Regulation (EU) 2022/868, the Data Governance Act, as its committee within the meaning of Regulation (EU) No 182/2011. Article 46(2) applies Article 5 of Regulation (EU) No 182/2011, the examination procedure, which the Data Act uses for these implementing acts:

• common specifications for the interoperability of data, data sharing mechanisms and common European data spaces (Article 33(5));
• common specifications for the interoperability of data processing services (Article 35(5));
• the references of harmonised standards and common specifications in the central Union standards repository for the interoperability of data processing services (Article 35(8));
• common specifications for smart contracts that execute data sharing agreements (Article 36(6)).

As of 5 November 2026, no references have been published in the central Union standards repository. The Commission proposal COM(2025) 837 would add Article 4 of Regulation (EU) No 182/2011 to Article 46 and would delete Article 36; both changes are pending as of 5 November 2026. The standards and common specifications behind these acts are explained under interoperability under the Data Act.

The Version in Force on 5 November 2026

As of 5 November 2026, the Data Act in force is the text published on 22 December 2023 as corrected by its seven corrigenda, because no act amending Regulation (EU) 2023/2854 has been adopted. The Commission proposal COM(2025) 837 of 19 November 2025, the Digital Omnibus (procedure 2025/0360(COD)), is pending: the Council's mandate for negotiations was agreed by the Committee of Permanent Representatives (Coreper) on 21 October 2026, and the European Parliament is at committee stage ("Awaiting committee decision") as of 5 November 2026. The proposal would add new chapters and an annex to the Data Act, but it would not change Article 29 or Article 50, so the switching-charge dates and the application dates would stand. The amendments page among the section pages below follows each step of the procedure.

The Regulation carries the note "Text with EEA relevance", yet as of 5 November 2026 it is not incorporated into the EEA Agreement, and EEA-Lex lists no EEA Joint Committee Decision for it.

The Regulation Pages in This Section

Three pages complete the legal-text section: the index of all 50 articles with the page that explains each, the pending amendments with their legislative stage, and the 43 definitions of Article 2. Each is linked once from Table 4.

Table 4: The pages of the legal-text section.

What the Official Text Page Does Not Explain

This page identifies and maps the legal text; what each obligation requires, for whom and from when is explained on the topic pages that own each article. Each topic page reads its articles together with their definitions, recitals, dates and the Commission's non-binding readings.

Why the Text Does Not Replace the Topic Pages

The Regulation states its rules once and spreads their conditions across definitions, recitals and dates, so a reader who starts from the text needs the topic page for the full answer. The design obligation of Article 3(1), for example, depends on the Article 2 definitions and on Article 50, third paragraph, which limits it to connected products and related services placed on the market after 12 September 2026. The EU Data Act is not the US DATA Act of 2014 and not the US CLOUD Act, which share part of the name on search pages.

Other Union Acts Named in the Final Provisions

Chapter XI names other Union acts in three articles: Article 44(1) leaves unaffected the specific obligations to make data available in Union acts that entered into force on or before 11 January 2024, and Articles 47 and 48 add the Data Act to the Annex to Regulation (EU) 2017/2394 (point 29) and to Annex I to Directive (EU) 2020/1828 (point (69)). How the Data Act sits beside the GDPR and the other data laws is explained under the Data Act and other EU laws.

Questions about the Official Text

Five questions readers ask about the text itself, each answered from the EUR-Lex record.

Is there a consolidated version of Regulation (EU) 2023/2854?

Yes, one. EUR-Lex lists a single consolidated version, CELEX 02023R2854-20231222, dated 22 December 2023. No amending act has been adopted as of 5 November 2026; the pending Commission proposal COM(2025) 837 would change the text in force only once it is adopted and published in the Official Journal.

Does the Data Act have an annex?

No. Regulation (EU) 2023/2854 has no annex. The Commission proposal COM(2025) 837 would add an Annex I listing categories of high-value datasets; the proposal is pending as of 5 November 2026.

Where can the PDF of the Data Act be downloaded?

The Official Journal text, including its PDF, is on the EUR-Lex page reached through the ELI http://data.europa.eu/eli/reg/2023/2854/oj. The official reference to quote is OJ L, 2023/2854, 22.12.2023, without a page number.

Has the English text of the Data Act been corrected?

Once. Corrigendum R(01) of 9 December 2024 renumbered the point that Article 48 adds to Annex I to Directive (EU) 2020/1828 from "68." to "(69)". The six later corrigenda concern other language versions only.

Is the Data Act the same as the Commission proposal COM(2022) 68?

No. COM(2022) 68 of 23 February 2022 is the Commission proposal, CELEX 52022PC0068, while the law is the text adopted on 13 December 2023 and published as Regulation (EU) 2023/2854. Only the adopted text is quoted as law.