Recital 100

Open interoperability specifications and standards developed in accordance with Annex II to Regulation (EU) No 1025/2012 of the European Parliament and of the Council (33) in the field of interoperability and portability are expected to enable a multi-vendor cloud environment, which is a key requirement for open innovation in the European data economy. As the market adoption of identified standards under the cloud standardisation coordination (CSC) initiative concluded in 2016 has been limited, it is also necessary that the Commission relies on parties in the market to develop relevant open interoperability specifications to keep up with the fast pace of technological development in this industry. Such open interoperability specifications can then be adopted by the Commission in the form of common specifications. In addition, where market-driven processes have not demonstrated a capacity to establish common specifications or standards that facilitate effective cloud interoperability at the PaaS and SaaS levels, the Commission should be able, on the basis of this Regulation and in accordance with Regulation (EU) No 1025/2012, to request European standardisation bodies to develop such standards for specific service types where such standards do not yet exist. In addition to this, the Commission will encourage parties in the market to develop relevant open interoperability specifications. After consulting stakeholders, the Commission, by means of implementing acts, should be able to mandate the use of harmonised standards for interoperability or common specifications for specific service types through a reference in a central Union standards repository for the interoperability of data processing services. Providers of data processing services should ensure compatibility with those harmonised standards and common specifications based on open interoperability specifications, which should not have an adverse impact on the security or integrity of data. Harmonised standards for the interoperability of data processing services and common specifications based on open interoperability specifications will be referenced only if they comply with the criteria specified in this Regulation, which have the same meaning as the requirements in Annex II to Regulation (EU) No 1025/2012 and the interoperability facets defined under the international standard ISO/IEC 19941:2017. In addition, standardisation should take into account the needs of SMEs.