Public sector bodies shall make their documents available in any pre-existing format or language, and, where possible and appropriate, in open and machine-readable format together with their metadata. Both the format and the metadata should, in so far as possible, comply with formal open standards.

Paragraph 1 shall not imply an obligation for public sector bodies to create or adapt documents or provide extracts in order to comply with that paragraph where this would involve disproportionate effort, going beyond a simple operation.

On the basis of this Directive, public sector bodies cannot be required to continue the production and storage of a certain type of documents with a view to the re-use of such documents by a private or public sector organisation.