European data spaces for public administrations and the role of data.europa.eu

In February 2020, the European Commission published its European Data Strategy, with the aim of creating a single market for data that freely flows within the EU for the benefit of businesses, researchers, and public administrations.

At the core of this strategy, there are the common European data spaces, covering 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. By providing relevant data infrastructure and governance frameworks, these data spaces should facilitate the pooling and sharing of data within and across sectors in Europe.

To support data sharing and the setting up of common European data spaces, the European Commission also published the Data Governance Act, which will be applicable in the EU from September 2023.

The role of data.europa.eu as an official portal for European open data can be of extreme relevance in the legislative landscape depicted above.