Article 15

An exceptional need to use certain data within the meaning of this Chapter shall be limited in time and scope and shall be considered to exist only in any of the following circumstances: (a) where the data requested is necessary to respond to a public emergency and the public sector body, the Commission, the European Central Bank or the Union body is unable to obtain such data by alternative means in a timely and effective manner under equivalent conditions; (b) in circumstances not covered by point (a) and only insofar as non-personal data is concerned, where: (i)a public sector body, the Commission, the European Central Bank or a Union body is acting on the basis of Union or national law and has identified specific data, the lack of which prevents it from fulfilling a specific task carried out in the public interest, that has been explicitly provided for by law, such as the production of official statistics or the mitigation of or recovery from a public emergency; and (ii)the public sector body, the Commission, the European Central Bank or the Union body has exhausted all other means at its disposal to obtain such data, including purchase of non-personal data on the market by offering market rates, or by relying on existing obligations to make data available or the adoption of new legislative measures which could guarantee the timely availability of the data.

Paragraph 1, point (b), shall not apply to microenterprises and small enterprises.

The obligation to demonstrate that the public sector body was unable to obtain non-personal data by purchasing them on the market shall not apply where the specific task carried out in the public interest is the production of official statistics and where the purchase of such data is not allowed by national law.