Art. 23 Removing obstacles to effective switching | Data act regulation | Data act

This article establishes the overarching obligation on providers of data processing services to actively enable customer switching.

It serves as the gateway article for the switching provisions of the regulation, directing providers to implement the specific measures detailed in subsequent articles (Articles 25 to 30).

The core thrust is that providers must not only refrain from creating obstacles to switching, but must also actively remove any that already exist — whether commercial, technical, contractual, or organisational in nature.

The goal is to give customers genuine freedom to move to a competing provider, to on-premises infrastructure, or even to use multiple providers simultaneously.

Important points:

Providers of data processing services must enable customers to switch freely and remove all existing obstacles — across pre-commercial, commercial, technical, contractual, and organisational dimensions.
Customers must be able to port their exportable data and digital assets, terminate contracts after the maximum notice period, and achieve functional equivalence with a new provider.
This article acts as the foundational switching obligation, with the detailed requirements on how to deliver it set out in Articles 25, 26, 27, 29, and 30.

Providers of data processing services shall take the measures provided for in Articles 25, 26, 27, 29 and 30 to enable customers to switch to a data processing service, covering the same service type, which is provided by a different provider of data processing services, or to on-premises ICT infrastructure, or, where relevant, to use several providers of data processing services at the same time. In particular, providers of data processing services shall not impose and shall remove pre-commercial, commercial, technical, contractual and organisational obstacles, which inhibit customers from:

terminating, after the maximum notice period and the successful completion of the switching process, in accordance with Article 25, the contract of the data processing service;
concluding new contracts with a different provider of data processing services covering the same service type;
porting the customer’s exportable data and digital assets, to a different provider of data processing services or to an on-premises ICT infrastructure, including after having benefited from a free-tier offering;
in accordance with Article 24, achieving functional equivalence in the use of the new data processing service in the ICT environment of a different provider of data processing services covering the same service type;
unbundling, where technically feasible, data processing services referred to in Article 30(1) from other data processing services provided by the provider of data processing services.