The ‘Data Governance and Intellectual Property Governance in Common European Data Spaces’ (DGIP-CEDS) project situates within the European Union’s strategic push to build a competitive, secure, and values-based European data economy. Under the European Strategy for Data (2020), the EU set forth to establish a single market for data through the development of Common European Data Spaces (CEDS)—federated networks and interoperable data-sharing ecosystems built on secure infrastructures designed to enable controlled access to and sharing of data between public and private actors within and across strategic sectors and domains such as health, energy, mobility, smart cities, and public administration. CEDS aim to enhance the wider pooling and re-use of data under fair access rules and trustworthy governance mechanisms. These initiatives are central to advancing research and innovation, sustainability efforts, and the development of public services in EU Member States, while safeguarding fundamental rights, fair competition, and data sovereignty.
Despite significant regulatory progress during the 2019–2024 EU legislative term—including the adoption of the Data Governance Act, the Data Act, the AI Act, and the European Health Data Space (EHDS) Regulation, the first sectoral legislative framework for CEDS—stakeholders have highlighted legal uncertainties and other tensions regarding data protection, data governance, and intellectual property (IP) frameworks governing the European data economy and specifically, CEDS. These challenges risk undermining trust, limiting participation, and constraining the scalability of data sharing. To address these issues, the European Commission’s 2024–2029 agenda has prioritised the simplification and coherence of these legal frameworks under the Data Union Strategy (2025).
DGIP-CEDS facilitated this work by examining how legal (regulatory and contractual) frameworks could be refined and aligned to enable fair, efficient, and scalable data sharing in CEDS. In general, the project mapped legal sources, principles, requirements and data space configurations which define data governance and IP governance in CEDS. In addition, the project analysed the legal operationalisation of data governance and IP governance requirements in the implementation of the EHDS (as a regulated data space), and developed legal solutions to support the conceptualisation of such requirements in other CEDS (future data spaces). The project integrated legal analyses with insights from social sciences, as an interdisciplinary approach is essential for designing workable rules in CEDS that reflect societal expectations, stakeholder incentives, trust dynamics, and economic realities.
