- Contributes to European Commission priorities
Innovation for data ecosystems and sovereignty is the focus of the ENABLED project which is part of the Digital and Data Sovereignty Unit. The unit conducts research and provides strategic advice on all issues pertaining to the development of an independent digital framework in the EU, including data sovereignty, independence of AI models, software and cloud infrastructures. The unit also drives its own research and provides science for policy insights on EU-wide digital ecosystems, data intelligence and data quality, including AI-ready data, in support of innovation and better science.
Within the Unit the project direction is building a solid connecting point within Europe for academia, policymakers and practitioners to become the policy and scientific pulse of digital sovereignty. We will work closely with EC Institutions, policy makers, industry representatives and academics to focus on relevant and stronger scientific outputs that stakeholders can use for advancing sovereign implementation.
Data and digital sovereignty are central to Europe's digital transformation, shaped by power imbalances that threaten innovation, minimise societal benefits, and protection from foreign tech dependencies. Scientific evidence can inform both data sharing and digital sovereignty in a multidisciplinary manner. In particular, specific emphasis can be put on evidence that can operationalise and improve both data sharing and digital independence.
The political context is shaped by the Political guidelines priorities for the 2024-2029 European Commission highlight data access as a major driver for competitiveness, productivity, and societal innovations. President von der Leyen thus calls for a data revolution and technological autonomy to ensure European data remains under EU control—shielded from external influence and strategically leveraged for autonomy in AI, cloud infrastructure, and critical technologies. This is realised through the Cloud and AI Development Act, the Open Source Strategy, and a new European Data Union Strategy, building on common European data spaces and key legal instruments like the Data Act and AI Act, to enhance data access and trigger business innovation. Yet, critical organisational, technical, legal, and economic challenges persist, demanding resolution for successful implementation.
Goals
- To advance research, inform relevant policies and operationalise the concept of digital sovereignty by studying the social, economic, environmental, technological and geopolitical implications of sovereignty, including through the collection and analysis of quantitative evidence, and selected use cases.
- To advance research and inform data sharing policy initiatives such as the European Data Union Strategy, common European data spaces at multiple levels of governance, through (i) the identification of enablers and bottlenecks in existing initiatives, (ii) experimental evaluation of different policy options and scenarios.
- To perform extensive use of sandboxing within the JRC Data Sharing/Digital Sovereignty Innovation Lab as a means to meet the first two objectives. The aim of the Lab is to design and implement dedicated regulatory and technical experiments in a controlled sandbox environment, therefore facilitating the uptake of solutions enabling digital sovereignty and data-driven innovation and at scale. The work of the Lab will be co-created with selected strategic stakeholders from policy DGs, Academia and Member State authorities.
Policy impact
ENABLED scientifically contributes, through the Joint Research Centre (JRC) Ispra, the Commission's goal towards Digital and Data sovereignty for Europe and to the European Data Union Strategy and EU policies on data sharing by implementing use cases to better understand governance and technical aspects of the European data ecosystems along with their different actors, roles, barriers and enablers. Establishment of the data sharing innovation lab will also support the relevant legal instruments such as the European Data Union strategy, Data Act, Data Governance Act, Open Data Directive, European Union Open Source Strategy and the AI Act, Interoperable Europe Act.
Selected key publications
This policy brief outlines the EU’s strategic imperative to assert digital sovereignty while remaining open to global collaboration. Defined as the EU’s capacity to exercise strategic independence in the digital domain—encompassing data governance, infrastructure control, and innovation—digital sovereignty aims to reduce vulnerabilities in economic, security, and technological spheres.
The report examines the transformative role of Generative AI (GenAI) with a specific emphasis on the European Union. It highlights the potential of GenAI for innovation, productivity, and societal change.
Multidisciplinary and multi-domain submissions that would contribute to shaping the research agenda, providing evidence of experiments (successful and even unsuccessful) and best practices for data-driven innovation that are in line with European values.
Role play on the use of wearable data in the European Health Data Space to explore how said data can be made available for secondary use.
Technical and organisational lessons learned from the scientific work of the JRC that can inform the scoping and implementation of common European data spaces, as envisioned by the European Strategy for data.
The report explores innovative approaches for unlocking relevant data to achieve the objectives of the European Green Deal.
Relevant legislation and policy initiatives
- European Data Union strategy
- European Union Open Source Strategy
- A Europe fit for the digital age
- European digital strategy
- Data Act
- AI Act
- Open Data Directive Implementing provisions on High-value datasets
- common European Data Spaces
- GreenData4All
- Interoperable Europe Act
- the EU Industrial Strategy
Further readings
Open but Not Powerless: Towards a Common Understanding of EU Digital Sovereignty
Pan-European open building footprints: analysis and comparison in selected countries
AI Generated Synthetic Data in Policy Applications
Principles for user-centric practices of cloud platforms
Self-Assessment Framework for Earth Observation Platforms from User Experience
Technological Enablers for Privacy Preserving Data Sharing and Analysis