rec_36

(36) Charges for the re-use of documents constitute an important market entry barrier for start-ups and SMEs. Documents should therefore be made available for re-use free of charge and, where charges are necessary, they should in principle be limited to the marginal costs. Where public sector bodies carry out a particularly extensive search for requested information or extremely costly modifications of the format of requested information, either voluntarily or as required under national law, marginal costs may cover the costs associated with such activities. In exceptional cases, the necessity of not hindering the normal running of public sector bodies that are required to generate revenue to cover a substantial part of their costs relating to the performance of their public tasks should be taken into consideration. This also applies where a public sector body has made data available as open data but is obliged to generate revenue to cover a substantial part of their costs relating to the performance of other public tasks. The role of public undertakings in a competitive economic environment should also be acknowledged. In such cases, public sector bodies and public undertakings should therefore be able to charge above marginal costs. Those charges should be set according to objective, transparent and verifiable criteria and the total income from supplying and allowing re-use of documents should not exceed the cost of collection and production, including purchasing from third parties, reproduction, maintenance, storage and dissemination, together with a reasonable return on investment. Where applicable, it should also be possible to include in the eligible cost the costs of anonymisation of personal data and costs of measures taken to protect the confidentiality of data. Member States may require public sector bodies and public undertakings to disclose those costs. The requirement to generate revenue to cover a substantial part of the public sector bodies' costs relating to the performance of their public tasks or the scope of the services of general interest entrusted with public undertakings does not have to be a legal requirement and may stem, for example, from administrative practices in Member States. Such a requirement should be regularly reviewed by the Member States.

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Source: EUR-Lex (Cellar) · retrieved 2026-09-25 · Text as adopted (Official Journal); later amendments are not incorporated in this text.