Dos and Don'ts for data sharing negotiations

These Dos and Don'ts can help make negotiations successful.

Dos	Don'ts
Before the negotiations
✓ Establish and maintain clear contact details, if possible a functional electronic mailbox to ensure business continuity.	✗ Expect that only one person in your organisation will handle data-sharing negotiations.
✓ Ensure that the contact details stated on REACH-IT are valid and regularly monitored.	✗ Give access rights to your functional mailboxes etc. only to your consultants.
Starting the negotiations
✓ Engage with a cooperative and problem-solving attitude.	✗ Be polemic or aggressive in your negotiations.
✓ Make clear and unambiguous requests. Clarify what you need and indicate your timelines for completing parts or all of the negotiations.	✗ Expect that your negotiating partner will guess and accommodate your unexpressed needs.
✓ Clarify your status (importer, manufacturer) and role (only representative, Lead Registrant, consultant), when needed.	✗ Create false impressions as to your power to conduct negotiations.
Communication
✓ Be concise and to the point. Be sensitive to cultural differences and language proficiency. Avoid ambiguity in your messages.	✗ Express yourself ambiguously.
✓ Be reliable, consistent and open in all negotiations.	✗ Change your request or position without explaining it.
✓ Act within the deadlines set by the law or yourself. Remind of your time constraints if necessary.	✗ Give an unreasonable timeframe in which to complete the negotiations.
✓ Keep written records of all steps of the negotiations, every email, call and meeting.	✗ Disclose confidential or commercially sensitive information.
✓ Explain your constraints, needs and motivations.	✗ Leave the other party struggling, if you can tell that there is an element, which it has not understood.
✓ Treat the company/person you are negotiating with as you would expect to be treated.	✗ Adopt an inflexible attitude.
Addressing the object of the negotiations
✓ Be sensitive to the capacity, size and situation of the party you are negotiating with.	✗ Ignore or underestimate the efforts (time, resources, etc.) that can be involved in the negotiations.
✓ Give the other party a fair and reasonable amount of time to reply to you.	✗ Cause unnecessary delays.
✓ Reply promptly to all reasonable requests/questions/communications.	✗ Ignore issues raised.
✓ Base negotiations on the data and their value. Provide non-commercially-sensitive information which your negotiating partner considers relevant to data valuation.	✗ Negotiate the price without considering objective criteria.
✓ Assess critically each information you receive during negotiations.	✗ Stay silent when you disagree with something.
✓ In case of disagreement with the proposed offers, data valuation methodology or other issues, propose alternative routes to find agreement. Be open to the alternatives proposed by your negotiating partner.	✗ Refuse to negotiate or to explore alternatives.
✓ Know the obligations under REACH and Implementing Regulation 2016/9. Justify claims on that basis.	✗ Ignore your data sharing obligations.
✓ Provide a notice before submitting a dispute claim.	✗ Submit a dispute claim without warning your counterpart.