Common European Data Spaces

European Health Data Space

Status: In force

• In force since 22 April, application from 26 May 2027

Open Finance Data Space

Status: In draft

• Commission’s proposal published 28 June 2023
• Council adopted its position on 4 December 2024
• Parliament approved its position in December 2024

Summary

The EU Commission aims to create EU-wide common, interoperable data spaces in strategic sectors to overcome existing legal and technical barriers to data sharing. The rules for common European data spaces will cover areas like health, mobility, environment, energy and agriculture, to:

• make better use of publicly held data for research for the common good,
• support voluntary data sharing by individuals, and
• set up structures to enable key organisations to share data.

Scope

European data spaces will apply on a sector level to respective key holders. The European Commission plans to create data spaces in the following sectors: health, mobility, finance, manufacturing, environment, energy, agriculture, public administration, skills, science (Open Science Cloud). 

Key elements

According to the European strategy for data, key elements of the data spaces will be:

• A secure and privacy-preserving infrastructure to pool, access, share, process and use data.
• A clear and practical structure for access to and use of data in a fair, transparent, proportionate and/non-discriminatory manner and clear and trustworthy data governance mechanisms.
• European rules and values, in particular personal data protection, consumer protection legislation and competition law, are fully respected.

Challenges

The challenges for each of the planned EU data spaces will depend on the specifics of each sector with reoccurring points like data interoperability and portability and data access mechanisms.