Europe moves towards a single data market with an eye on cybersecurity and AI

Under the Spanish presidency of the Council of the European Union, the Cumbre Gaia-X Summit 2023, an event that brought together leaders from the European data space community and culminated in the promotion of open strategic autonomy in the cloud, data and artificial intelligence.

The document, the result of collaboration between the European association Gaia-X AISBL, the Spanish 'hub' of Gaia-X and the Data Office (dependent on the Secretary of State for Digitalization and Artificial Intelligence), and framed in the Spanish Presidency , constitutes a joint call for a “more coherent and coordinated” response in the development of European programs and projects related to the cloud, data and artificial intelligence.

The interconnection of the cloud, data and artificial intelligence will be a fundamental pillar for the future competitiveness and highlights the importance of data for efficiency in the industrial value chain. For this reason, the EU intends promote interoperability, backed by a robust infrastructure of cloud services and advocates the development of high-quality data-driven Artificial Intelligence with strong governance that complies with European regulatory frameworks.

The call is part of the various European initiatives and programs already underway, from the IPCEI-CIS until the project simplicity European. However, it underlines the need for broader and more effective coordination to drive industrial projects, advance the standardization of cloud labels and trusted data, and ensure high levels of cybersecurity, data protection and algorithmic transparency.

The Gaia-X initiative seeks to generate a model to deploy data spaces and achieve efficient data exchange. Data sharing provides two relevant benefits, namely increasing the general availability of data and its usefulness in producing joint data of higher quality.

The objective is to achieve a “flexible, dynamic and highly scalable” data economy that facilitates access to more and better data from heterogeneous but complementary domains, improving the quality of products and services within the value chain.

With the goal of achieving a Single Data Market, the processes of data exchanges They must follow a common governance framework. Thus, he values ​​that the new set of digital and data legislation, such as the Data Law or the Data Governance Law, is becoming a global reference, but points out that there is still a need for its practical articulation to generate traceability and trust and enhance data coordination.

Summit in Alicante

The Gaia-X Summit 2023 has served as a space for the exchange of ideas and for the presentation of key projects. During the event, the implementation of a Strategic Plan by Ulrich Ahle, CEO of the European Gaia-X Association for Data and Cloud AISBL, focused on ensuring end-user adoption and driving collaboration with data and cloud service providers.

The intensity of the discussions during the event and the results achieved, reflected in the document, underline the relevance and commitment of the European data spaces community.

Signed by the Secretary of State for Digitalization and Artificial Intelligence, Carmen Artigas, and the Chief Data Officer of Spain and president of the Government Council of Gai-X, Alberto Palomo, is supported by the representative leaders of the European data ecosystem, such as Gaia-X AISBL, the Spanish hub of Gaia, the International Association of Data Spaces, the EU Data Spaces Support Center, the Big Data Value Association (BDVA), the Spanish Platform for the Adoption and Diffusion of ICT (Planetic), the Red Cervera or the Federation of Technology Centers of Spain (FEDIT) or AMETIC.

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