The chapter of the Data Act that reaches an ordinary business first is not about connected products. It is about leaving your cloud provider: a two-month notice cap, a thirty-day transition, switching charges that disappear in January 2027, and terms about data that stop binding you when they are unfair.
The part that is already in force
Regulation (EU) 2023/2854 — the Data Act — has applied since 12 September 2025. Most commentary on it is about data from connected products. The provisions that reach an ordinary business first are elsewhere: the chapter on switching between data processing services, which means cloud and similar services, and the chapter that makes certain terms unenforceable between businesses.
What your cloud contract must now say
Article 25 requires the customer's rights and the provider's obligations on switching to be set out in a written contract, available before signature in a form you can store. These figures are fixed by the Regulation, not negotiable downwards.
| Term | What the Regulation fixes |
|---|---|
| Notice to start switching | No longer than two months |
| Transition to complete it | No longer than 30 calendar days, with the contract still running |
| Data retrieval afterwards | At least 30 calendar days from the end of the transition |
| What can be taken out | An exhaustive list of categories, covering at a minimum all exportable data |
| Erasure | Guaranteed in full once the switch is complete and the retrieval period has run |
During the transition the provider must give reasonable assistance, maintain business continuity, disclose known risks to it, and keep security high throughout. Article 23 adds the rule behind all of it: commercial, technical, contractual and organisational obstacles to leaving must be removed, not merely priced.
The date that changes the economics
Switching charges are being withdrawn in two steps. Until 12 January 2027 a provider may impose reduced charges, capped at the costs directly linked to that switching process. From 12 January 2027 no switching charge may be imposed at all. Any fee schedule agreed now has a date on which it stops being enforceable.
Unfair terms, between businesses
Article 13 does something commercial contracts rarely see. A term about access to and use of data, or about liability and remedies for breach or termination of data obligations, which has been unilaterally imposed by one enterprise on another, is not binding on the other if it is unfair — that is, if its use grossly deviates from good commercial practice, contrary to good faith and fair dealing. A term that merely reflects mandatory Union law is not unfair.
So “it is our standard form” is no longer the end of the discussion where the term is about data.
Which contracts, and when
The unfair-terms chapter applies to contracts concluded after 12 September 2025.
It reaches older ones from 12 September 2027, but only where the contract is of indefinite duration or expires at least ten years from 11 January 2024. A fixed three-year contract from 2024 runs out from under it; an evergreen one does not.
The connected-product obligation in Article 3(1) applies to products placed on the market after 12 September 2026.
Two things worth doing
Read your main cloud contract against Article 25. No exit clause, a notice period over two months, or charges that survive January 2027 all mean the contract is behind the Regulation, and renewal is when that gets closed.
Ask for the exhaustive list. “Your data” is not a specification: the categories must be named, including what the provider holds back and why.
Enforcement and penalties are set nationally, so which Latvian authority supervises which part of this is a question to settle locally.