The European Commission estimates that the data economy in Europe will be worth €829 billion by 2025 – a significant change from the valuation of €301 billion in 2018. This presents a fantastic opportunity for Europe to embrace the potential of data-driven business to foster innovation and well-being according to European values by creating a single market for data. However, more must be done to establish appropriate structures for sharing and reusing data across sectors and EU member states.
The European Data Strategy of 2020 established a roadmap for the European single market for data, emphasising trustworthy and transparent data structures, fairness and individual empowerment. To achieve these policy goals, the EU passed the Data Governance Act, which facilitates the development of data spaces across strategic sectors for the EU economy, and the Data Act, which is currently undergoing trilogue negotiations. The overall aim is to remove barriers to data access for consumers and businesses.
The European Data Spaces aim to create a common framework for data sharing within the EU single market, which will unlock the full potential of data-driven innovation, promote new services, and boost the competitiveness of European companies. But as Europe advances the regulatory framework to realise the premises of the Data Strategy for a fair and innovative data economy, it is the right moment to focus on the next steps in the implementation process and the questions for the European decision-makers from 2024 onwards.
This EPC project, in collaboration with the Finnish Innovation Fund (SITRA), explores the links of Europe’s data policy landscape with the needs of the industry and society. The project’s work is structured in several roundtables in consultation with high-level officials and stakeholders exploring the challenges of implementing European Data Spaces, opportunities for data portability and the increasingly important world of RegTech.