Summary

  • From 12 January 2027, Article 29 of the EU Data Act bars providers from charging customers switching fees, including data-egress charges. The transition period still permits reduced fees directly linked to switching costs.
  • The ban removes a price barrier. Service fees, early-termination penalties, migration work, export boundaries and continuity planning remain on the executive’s desk.

The invoice gets shorter

On 12 January 2027, a familiar cloud bill loses a line. Article 29 of Regulation (EU) 2023/2854 says providers of data-processing services may no longer impose switching charges on customers for the switching process. Data egress—the transfer of data out—sits inside that category.

The calendar matters. Between 11 January 2024 and 12 January 2027, providers may impose reduced switching charges, capped at costs directly linked to the particular switch. The Data Act has applied since September 2025; its charge prohibition reaches its final stage in January 2027.

That change is useful, and narrower than “the cloud becomes free to leave.” Article 29 separates switching charges from standard service fees and early-termination penalties. Providers must explain those possible charges before a customer signs. The law’s own recital also recognises paid third-party migration support and fixed-term contracts with proportionate early-termination penalties, subject to applicable law.

A finance team that deletes “egress” from a forecast but leaves the service contract, termination schedule and migration budget untouched has not planned an exit. It has edited one row.

The work never lived on one invoice

A real migration joins data movement to application dependencies, identity and access, logging, network paths, security review, testing and a destination that can run the workload. Staff time and outside implementation support belong in that plan. The Data Act sets legal duties; it does not publish a universal migration price or promise that every workload moves intact.

The law gives customers a contractual process. Switching rights and provider duties must be written down. The ordinary transition period may run for no more than 30 calendar days after the maximum notice period, while the service contract remains in force. Customers must receive at least 30 calendar days after the transition to retrieve data. If the provider finds the 30-day period technically unfeasible, it must notify the customer within 14 working days, explain why and set an alternative period of no more than seven months, with continuity maintained during that period.

Those clocks turn “we can leave” into a sequence that someone has to operate: notice, export, transfer, validation, cutover and retrieval. A deadline in a contract is useful only when the customer has named the people, destination and decision rights needed to meet it.

Export has a border

The Act’s switching right concerns exportable data and digital assets. The definition includes input and output data, with metadata, generated through the customer’s use of the service. It excludes data protected by the provider’s or a third party’s intellectual-property rights, and data that constitutes a trade secret. Executives need an inventory that follows this boundary into each application and managed service.

The technical promise also has a boundary. For infrastructure services that do not provide the operating services, software or applications running on the infrastructure, Article 30 requires reasonable measures to help a customer achieve functional equivalence after moving to the same service type. The test covers shared features and materially comparable results for the same input; leaders still need to map dependencies that fall outside that boundary.

For other services, the Act sets interface and interoperability duties, while the Commission describes common, machine-readable export as a baseline for platform and software services. Either way, an export file is the opening move. The destination must be able to interpret it, and the service must still work after the handoff.

Put the door in the contract

The European Commission published voluntary, non-binding cloud clauses in November 2025. Its Switching & Exit, Termination, and Security & Business Continuity clauses give buyers material for contract review; they do not replace negotiation or turn a template into a migration plan.

Procurement leaders should ask providers to identify the export set, formats, notice steps, support duties, continuity arrangements, retrieval window, retained service fees and early-termination terms. Technical owners should rehearse a sample export and re-import before the relationship is under pressure. Finance should keep migration labor and destination preparation separate from switching charges.

The toll disappears; an exit still needs a crew. The Data Act makes one charge disappear. The organization still has to know what it can carry through the opening, what has to be rebuilt on the other side and who is responsible for keeping the lights on during the move.

Official Sources