Staff working document on data spaces

To harness the value of data for the benefit of the European economy and society, the Commission supports the development of common European data spaces in strategic economic sectors and domains of public interest.
The European data strategy of February 2020 announced the creation of data spaces in 10 strategic fields: health, agriculture, manufacturing, energy, mobility, financial, public administration, skills, the European Open Science Cloud and the crosscutting key priority of meeting the Green Deal objectives. 
Since then, data spaces in other important areas such as media and cultural heritage have also emerged. The ultimate goal is that together, the data spaces will form a single European data space: a genuine single market for data.

Concept

Common European data spaces bring together relevant data infrastructures and governance frameworks in order to facilitate data pooling and sharing.

They:
(i)    deploy data-sharing tools and services for the pooling, processing and sharing of data by an open number of organisations, as well as federate energy-efficient and trustworthy cloud capacities and related services;
(ii)    include data governance structures, compatible with relevant EU legislation, which determine, in a transparent and fair way, the rights concerning access to and processing of the data;
(iii)    improve the availability, quality and interoperability of data – both in domain-specific settings and across sectors.

Objectives

The creation of EU-wide common, interoperable data spaces in strategic sectors will overcome existing legal and technical barriers to data sharing and, as such, unleash the enormous potential of data-driven innovation.
It will allow data from across the EU to be made available and exchanged in a trustworthy and secure manner. Businesses, public administrations and individuals in Europe will be in control of the data they generate, while knowing that they can trust the way in which it is used to boost innovation.
Common European data spaces will therefore enhance the development of new data driven products and services in the EU and thereby create the core tissue of an interconnected and competitive European data economy. 

State of play

This document, prepared in response to a request from the European Council, provides an overview of the common European data spaces. 
First, it presents relevant horizontal aspects, including the concept, cross-sectoral legislation and measures, EU support programmes and data infrastructure initiatives. Second, it describes the current state of play of the common European data spaces that were announced by the European Commission. 
The Commission will further report on the development of common European data spaces in 2023.