EU Data Act cloud switching: contract periods, egress fees until 12 January 2027 and an exit plan

Data Act cloud switching: the rules and their dates

The EU Data Act, Regulation (EU) 2023/2854, obliges providers of cloud and other data processing services to let customers switch to another provider or to their own on-premise infrastructure on written contract terms. Since 12 September 2025 the contract must provide for a notice period of at most two months, a transitional period of at most 30 calendar days for the move and at least 30 calendar days to retrieve data, followed by full erasure. Until 12 January 2027 providers may impose reduced switching charges, data egress included, capped at their costs directly linked to the switch; from 12 January 2027 they may impose none.

As of 6 October 2026 these rules apply as published in 2023. The Digital Omnibus proposal of 19 November 2025 would amend parts of Chapter VI, but the European Parliament’s Legislative Observatory lists it as “Awaiting committee decision”, and we found no adopted amendment.

Regulation (EU) 2023/2854, 2023 text, Articles 25 to 32 and 50 (application from 12 September 2025); the 11 January 2024 start is the wording of Article 29(2).

Which services, data and contracts the switching rules cover

A “data processing service” in Article 2(8) is a digital service that “enables ubiquitous and on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable, scalable and elastic computing resources”, and recital 81 places such services in the IaaS, PaaS and SaaS delivery models. Switching, in Article 2(34), includes moving to “on-premises ICT infrastructure”. Article 23 obliges providers to remove obstacles to switching, to porting data and digital assets and to functional equivalence.

What moves is exportable data, the input and output data and metadata generated by your use of the service, excluding the provider’s or third parties’ intellectual property and trade secrets (Article 2(38)), and digital assets, such as applications, for which you have the right of use “independently from the contractual relationship” (Article 2(32)). Software you use only through the provider’s contract, such as operating system licences supplied with hosted VMs, therefore needs its own line in the exit plan.

Under Article 31(1), Article 23(d), Article 29 and Article 30(1) and (3) do not apply to services whose main features were mostly custom-built for one customer, or whose components were all developed for that customer, and which are not offered at broad commercial scale via the service catalogue. Article 31(2) excludes time-limited, non-production test versions from the whole chapter, and under Article 31(3) the provider must say before the contract which obligations do not apply. Article 50 sets no contract-date rule for Chapter VI, and the omnibus proposal refers to “the need to align existing contracts” with the Regulation. Whether a service falls under Article 31, and whether an existing contract has to be amended, is a legal assessment for your legal department.

Notice period, transitional period, data retrieval and erasure

Article 25 sets the minimum content of the written contract, which the provider must make available before signing in a form the customer can store and reproduce.

Regulation (EU) 2023/2854, Article 25(1) to (5), 2023 text.

The contract ends when switching has been completed successfully or, if you choose erasure, at the end of the notice period (Article 25(2)(c)). It must list exhaustively the categories of data and digital assets that can be ported, at least all exportable data, and any provider-internal data exempted for trade-secret reasons (Article 25(2)(e), (f)).

Because the 30 days begin when the notice period ends, the target platform, network path and migration method need to be ready by then. A notice to switch to another provider must already give “the necessary details of that provider” (Article 25(3)). As our own illustration, 50 TB over a 1 Gbit/s link takes about 4.6 days at full line rate, before protocol overhead, verification and the resynchronisation of changed data.

Our technical assessment delivers a review of the systems, the target configuration and a step-by-step migration plan, at a price fixed before work begins. Tell us how much data has to move and which periods your contract sets.

Switching charges and egress fees until and after 12 January 2027

Article 2(36) defines switching charges as charges “other than standard service fees or early termination penalties” for the actions the Regulation mandates for switching, “including data egress charges”, the network transfer fees for extracting data (Article 2(35)). Article 29(2) and (3) allow reduced switching charges from 11 January 2024, when the Regulation entered into force, to 12 January 2027, if they do not exceed the provider’s costs directly linked to the switching process. From 12 January 2027, providers “shall not impose any switching charges on the customer for the switching process” (Article 29(1)).

Standard service fees and early termination penalties are not switching charges, and Article 29(4) requires the provider to state both, with any reduced switching charges, before the contract is concluded. For in-parallel use, where data moves between providers continuously rather than once, recital 99 says providers “should therefore continue to be able to impose data egress charges, not exceeding the costs incurred” after three years from the Regulation’s entry into force. If a switch will run across 12 January 2027, ask the provider in writing which charges apply to which part of the process.

Functional equivalence, open interfaces and export formats

For services limited to infrastructural elements such as servers, networks and virtual resources, without access to the operating services and applications on them, Article 30(1) requires the source provider to take all reasonable measures in its power to facilitate functional equivalence at the destination, and to provide “capabilities, adequate information, documentation, technical support and, where appropriate, the necessary tools”. Functional equivalence (Article 2(37)) means a minimum level of functionality, re-established from your exportable data and digital assets, with “a materially comparable outcome in response to the same input for shared features”.

Other providers must offer open interfaces free of charge to customers and destination providers (Article 30(2)). Until common specifications or harmonised standards for a service type are published in the central Union standards repository, Article 30(5) requires the provider to export all exportable data “in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format” on request. No provider has to develop new technologies or disclose assets protected by intellectual property rights or trade secrets (Article 30(6)).

On a VMware-based IaaS the data to move is mostly VM disks, their configuration and the surrounding network and firewall settings; methods, downtime and re-IP are covered in our guide to migrating VMs to a hosted VMware platform. Under Article 26 the provider also describes its switching methods, formats and known limitations, and keeps an online register of data structures, formats and standards.

Jurisdiction and government access: Articles 28 and 32

Providers must publish, under Article 28, the jurisdiction of the ICT infrastructure behind each service and a general description of their measures against international governmental access to non-personal data held in the Union that would conflict with Union or national law. Article 32 adds safeguards against such access and obliges the provider to inform the customer of a third-country request before complying, except, for as long as necessary, where the request serves law enforcement purposes. Compare those statements when you choose a destination; our article on the CLOUD Act and EU data residency covers the US side.

The Digital Omnibus proposal and the Commission’s cloud contract clauses

On 19 November 2025 the Commission proposed the Digital Omnibus, COM(2025) 837, amending the Data Act among other acts. Its explanatory memorandum says the amendments will maintain “the ambition of removing vendor lock-in, particularly switching and egress charges”, while reducing the administrative burden on providers of significantly customised services and on SMEs and small mid-cap companies (SMCs). Under recital 17, custom-made services other than IaaS, provided under contracts concluded on or before 12 September 2025, would fall outside Chapter VI except for the obligation to reduce and ultimately remove switching and egress charges. Recital 18 adds a specific regime for SME and SMC providers of services other than IaaS under contracts of the same date, and clarifies that fixed-duration contracts may contain “proportionate early termination penalties” as long as they do not constitute an obstacle to switching.

Both light regimes, as the recitals describe them, exclude IaaS and keep the withdrawal of switching charges. As of 6 October 2026 the European Parliament’s Legislative Observatory lists the procedure, 2025/0360(COD), as “Awaiting committee decision”; the Council’s final approval of 29 June 2026 concerned the separate omnibus on artificial intelligence. Until an amending regulation takes effect, the 2023 text applies, and the adopted text may differ from the proposal.

On the same day the Commission published a draft recommendation with model contractual terms for data access and use and six non-binding standard contractual clauses (SCCs) for cloud computing contracts, named Switching & Exit, Termination, Security & Business continuity, Non-Dispersion, Non-Amendment and Liability. Its page, last updated 3 March 2026, says their use “is voluntary and open to users’ possible amendments” and names translating and publishing them in all EU languages as the next step. The Commission’s Data Act page, last updated 2 July 2026, still links it as a draft recommendation, and neither page reports a formal adoption.

Cloud exit strategy: what the exit plan should contain

Under Article 25(2)(b) the contract must oblige the provider to support your exit strategy, “including by providing all relevant information”.

1. List each cloud service and contract with its service type, conclusion date, the periods written in it and any provider statement that Article 31 exceptions apply.
2. List the data and digital assets per system: VM disks and configuration, databases, object storage, backups, logs, DNS zones, certificates, keys, identities and access policies; mark licences held only through the provider’s contract.
3. Request the provider’s Article 26 information and its statements on charges and penalties under Article 29 in writing.
4. Choose a target for each system (another provider, your own data centre, or a hybrid in which some systems stay on-premise); our comparison of IaaS, private cloud and hybrid sets out the criteria.
5. Prepare the destination, migrate a representative system as a test before notice, measure transfer rates against the 30 days and decide whether you need the one-time extension.
6. Put the cutovers into maintenance windows with a rollback plan for each, and name the third parties you authorise to work with the source provider.
7. Protect the transfer with encryption in transit, controlled key custody and temporary credentials revoked afterwards.
8. After the last cutover, check completeness before the retrieval period ends, ask for written confirmation of erasure and update backup and disaster recovery documentation.

We move systems to our EU Cloud step by step, in agreed maintenance windows and with a rollback plan, and we provide test access to the platform before migration. Describe the systems in your exit plan in the form below, with sizes and dependencies.

General information on EU law as of October 2026, not legal advice for an individual case.

What we do

Under our EU Cloud service we host guaranteed compute or a private cloud in Tier-3 data centres in the EU, operated by Baltneta, a European operator in Lithuania, on a European contract with a transparent monthly invoice in euros. Our engineering partner Vixen.UNO handles migration and support and moves systems in agreed maintenance windows with a rollback plan. Hybrid is a standard scenario, with some systems staying with you and replication between the sites. The first call is free of charge, and the price of the technical assessment is fixed before work begins. Our security and compliance page lists the documents we sign and the subprocessors named in the contract.

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