Commission right to reject screen-scraping ban

The European Banking Authority (EBA) recently proposed a ban on third-party financial services firms, such as those offering automated financial advice, from using software to automatically collect consumer data from banks.

Such a ban would limit innovation by enabling financial institutions to unfairly restrict their customers’ ability to share data with companies whose services often compete with those of the banks.

The EBA claims that the technique, known as “screen-scraping,...