Common European Data Spaces: Fostering Data Innovation & Collaboration in the EU

The Common European Data Spaces is a European Union (EU) initiative to connect entrepreneurs, innovators, developers, and companies by creating sector-specific data spaces. The project aims to establish a safe digital environment for European businesses and individuals. This article explains the concept of common data spaces and their benefits for companies and investors in Europe.

In today’s world, data is a critical asset that drives innovation, shapes decision-making, and fuels the global economy. It underpins everything from business strategies to technological advancements, enabling organizations to gain insights, optimize operations, and deliver personalized experiences.

As the backbone of digital transformation, data’s role is more significant than ever, making its protection, management, and strategic use paramount for success in the modern era.

Some background
To understand why common data spaces make sense in the EU context, it’s important to be aware of how and why the community was created. The EU was formed after World War II when European countries united economically, socially, and politically to create a strong, cohesive entity. In 1993, the EU established a single market to ensure the free movement of goods, services, capital, and persons.

The Grand Scheme — European Data Strategy
The EU Commission works on various fronts, including research and innovation, and has prioritized data as a key asset. It’s currently developing the European Data Strategy, which outlines the framework and governance structures needed to manage data spaces effectively. This includes establishing common standards, protocols, and legal frameworks (such as the Data Governance Act, the GDPR norms, and the Data Act, the latter entering into force in January this year) to ensure data is shared and used in a way that respects privacy, security, and ethical considerations. The broader data strategy aims to:

• Improve healthcare
• Create safer and cleaner transport systems
• Generate new products and services
• Reduce the costs of public services
• Improve sustainability and energy efficiency

Before the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) and the Common European Data Spaces, accessing specific data involved complex bureaucratic hurdles. Imagine needing a series of books that were scattered along Europe, and having to fly to libraries in Barcelona, Helsinki, Munich, London, and Lisbon to gather everything. These data spaces now centralize information, simplifying access for authorized users.

EOCS — Aggregating Data
Discussions about the creation of EOSC started in 2015, after which a long-term plan was laid. According to a European Commission document, “In the initial phase of implementation (2018–2020), the European Commission invested around €250 million to prototype components of the EOSC” together with a few projects integrated in Horizon 2020 (EU’s biggest research and innovation program to date). EOSC serves as a loaded digital storage for data from all over the EU, and just like goods, and services, it can be shared amongst the different states and countries.

Common European Data Spaces — Welcoming Innovation in Data Collaboration
The Common European Data Spaces is meant to unite the EU states in matters of data knowledge and sharing. According to a webinar from May 2023, it all stemmed from the idea to “create a market for data”.

Discussions on the project started in 2020. It was launched to promote the creation and use of shared data spaces across various sectors and domains. These data spaces are designed to facilitate the secure and standardized exchange of data between organizations, businesses, and public entities, enabling more innovative services, products, and solutions across Europe, and the EOSC.

Making information available and shareable through one source eases everyone’s job, in the sense that it eliminates tiresome and time-consuming processes such as requests for data, and approvals. The Common European Data Spaces is set to become a vast group of dedicated libraries that instead of books and documents, provides data in various forms. However, this isn’t its only goal: the European Common Data Spaces will operate as an aggregator and manager of innovative projects that focus on developing novel solutions.

The platform is being developed using advanced technologies such as AI and blockchain. According to the policy’s official website, the Common European Data Spaces are:

• Open to every organization and individual.
• A secure and privacy-preserving infrastructure with the objective of pooling, accessing, sharing, processing, and using data.
• Conforming to EU legislation, including the regulations about personal data protection, and competition.
• A platform for data holders to share and grant access to personal and non-personal data, thus empowering them to make their information available for reuse by other entities.

Who’s In
There are Common European Data Spaces currently being developed across 14 sectors, including agriculture, cultural heritage, energy, finance, health, manufacturing, media, mobility, and many more. The idea is to foster the development of innovative data center solutions in these areas.

Examples of companies doing these are AgriDataSpace, which is building a European secure space framework for data in agriculture), Data Cellar (a common blockchain-based data space to support the creation, and management of LECs in Europe), OMEGA-X, a data platform to share information between different actors within the energy sector, B-Cubed (democratizing access to biodiversity data to be used and analyzed by policymakers in solving relevant environmental issues), MyHealth@EU (a data service to exchange health information in case EU patients need healthcare assistance elsewhere in the European Union, including prescriptions), UNDERPIN (creating a data market for collaboration between manufacturing SMEs and industry leaders in Europe), and TEMS, a project building a data ecosystem for the European media sector.

Anyone with an interesting and well-laid project that fosters data management and collaboration in one of the 14 approved areas can seek investment and support to develop meaningful solutions that benefit the European Union citizens and companies.

Investing in Blockchain & AI
The EU has been launching a series of campaigns to foster the development of innovative solutions featuring new technologies such as blockchain and AI, namely the legislation that regulates them (the EU AI Act), the Large AI Grand Challenge, and other packages of measures. Read more about them here.

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