Press Release: “On 2 July 2025, the Commission published a delegated act outlining rules granting access to data for qualified researchers under the Digital Services Act (DSA). This delegated act enables access to the internal data of very large online platforms (VLOPs) and search engines (VLOSEs) to research the systemic risks and on the mitigation measures in the European Union.
The delegated act on data access clarifies the procedures for VLOPs and VLOSEs to share data with vetted researchers, including data formats and requirements for data documentation. Moreover, the delegated act sets out which information Digital Services Coordinators (DSCs), VLOPs and VLOSEs must make public to facilitate vetted researchers’ applications to access relevant datasets.
With the adoption of the delegated act, the Commission will launch the DSA data access portal where researchers interested in accessing data under the new mechanism can find information and exchange with VLOPs, VLOSEs and DSCs on their data access applications.
Before accessing internal data, researchers must be vetted by a DSC.
For this vetting process, researchers must submit a data access application demonstrating their affiliation to a research organisation, their independence from commercial interests, and their ability to manage the requested data in line with security, confidentiality and privacy rules. In addition, researchers need to disclose the funding of the research project for which the data is requested and commit to publishing the results of their research. Only data that is necessary to perform research on systemic risks in the EU can be requested.
To complement the rules in the delegated act, on 27 June 2025 the Board of Digital Services endorsed a proposal for further cooperation among DSCs in the vetting process of researchers…(More)”.