As the EU continues taking decisive steps towards a sovereign, fair and interoperable data economy, the need to turn data into tangible value becomes ever more pressing. But how best to achieve this? A detailed assessment by Capgemini on behalf of the Data Spaces Support Centre (DSSC) explores how Europe’s data spaces are the answer – and discovers what more needs to be done to bring them to maturity.
This article asks:
- How do data spaces contribute to the European economy?
- What is the EC-funded Data Spaces Support Centre (DSSC)?
- Why does data space maturity matter for the EU today?
- What does the DSSC report tell us about the EU’s data spaces?
What next for Europe’s data spaces? It is more than five years since the European Commission first mentioned data spaces as a crucial instrument for achieving Europe’s vision for data by enabling the sharing of data within secure environments. The ambition was for these data spaces to support data reuse by trusted partners in strategic sectors and domains of public interest. Indeed, dozens of domain-specific data spaces are now emerging, from manufacturing and energy to mobility, health, smart communities, green deal, and public sector. Each is contributing to the vision set by the European Data Strategy and enabled through the Data Act and Data Governance Act.
Now, with years of experience under their collective belts, how mature are Europe’s data spaces?
What are data spaces and why does Europe need them?
Before we explore this in more depth, it is worth a recap of what data spaces are and what they aim to achieve in today’s data-driven world. Our previous article Are data spaces the future? is an informative starting point for anyone new to this topic.
The ultimate objective of Europe’s common data spaces is to create value. And this value comes in many guises, whether that’s reducing data transaction costs, creating new business opportunities for participating organizations, fostering innovation across industries, or at both societal and economic levels.
What is Capgemini’s contribution to the data space landscape?
As a member of the Data Spaces Support Centre (DSSC) funded by the European Commission, Capgemini is ideally positioned to track the current and potential value created. We have also garnered insight that can help early-stage data spaces progress from pilots to operational, scalable ecosystems. Indeed, we recently helped develop and undertake the first consolidated, data-driven overview of Europe’s data space initiatives for the DSSC.
How can we take Europe’s data spaces to the next level?
The DSSC assessment evidenced encouraging trends, notably the strong momentum in the business dimension, largely driven by use case development. At the same time, it identified a need for the data space initiatives to ramp up their efforts in key areas.
Five ways to build maturity across European data spaces
The following recommendations are intended to ensure Europe’s data spaces ramp up and deliver.
- Governance and legal: To enable what the DSSC describes as “secure and trustworthy data transactions between participants,” a data space must be built on structured rules, processes, and roles definition – a governance framework. Currently behind the curve in this aspect, Europe’s common data spaces need to start operationalizing governance by finalizing rulebooks, clarifying authority, and documenting roles and responsibilities.
- Technical: Trust is a key component in the reduction of barriers to data sharing and reuse. Still relatively immature in Europe’s common data spaces, trust-related capabilities such as identity management, trust frameworks, and machine-readable policy enforcement, should become a priority to build trust and ensure compliance going forward.
- Operational: While most of Europe’s common data spaces are still getting off the ground, as they become more operational there will be a rise in participation, transaction volumes, and data flows. To ensure we are ready for this, now is the time to create monitoring mechanisms that will track these systematically, while providing transparent measurement to all stakeholders.
- Business: A multi-stakeholder data space will invariably start out with multiple business models and use cases, which must be consolidated to create a single overarching business model. This should include revenue/funding strategies that can be validated through pilots, while acknowledging that the funding model (especially if all or partly publicly-funded) will evolve over time as the reuse of data products increases.
- Skills: Early data space set-ups are typically heavily reliant on technical and engineering skills. To enable scaling and generate value in the future, stakeholders must now bring on board the commercial expertise needed to start planning and identifying ways in which use cases can either be monetized or create true value in other ways, such as by increasing productivity or sparking innovation.
Why this matters – enabling scaling and interoperability in Europe
Together, the recommendations above can support data space initiatives in moving from pilots toward greater operational readiness and, ultimately, scalable implementation. In turn, this will help to advance the EU’s ambition for a sovereign, trusted and interoperable data economy, and the creation of a European Single Market for Data.
What does the insight empower Europe’s data space stakeholders to do? Alongside these recommendations, the DSSC assessment and ensuing report (see FAQs) reveal where coordinated action is needed. This will help:
- Data space coordinators identify strengths and priority development areas
- Domain stakeholders understand how close initiatives are to operational readiness
- EU institutions steer support, funding, and standardization more effectively
- The DSSC refine guidance, tools, and blueprints for maximum impact.
This also builds trust and transparency across the broader ecosystem, ensuring that data space initiatives evolve consistently and interoperably, rather than in silos.
How we measured maturity – and our model’s broader scope
Capgemini led the development of the DSSC maturity model against which the data space initiatives were measured. We also led the design, execution, and analysis of the maturity assessment. This included indicator definition, survey instrument design, data collection and scoring, and consolidation of insights.
This DSSC maturity model has now gained major strategic importance beyond the DSSC project. It has been taken over by CEN/CENELEC Joint Technical Committee 25 (JTC 25) as the baseline for the upcoming European Technical Specification on the maturity assessment of Common European Data Spaces, under the standardization request by the European Commission.
How are Capgemini and the DSSC making a difference to Europe’s data spaces? The DSSC maturity model is set to contribute to Europe’s harmonized standards for trusted data transactions and data space development.
This achievement reflects our commitment to shaping the trusted data economy and supporting public authorities and industries in building interoperable, scalable, and value-driven‑driven data ecosystems.
Read more
Download the full DSSC data space maturity assessment report and maturity model.
Authors
“A European data economy based on openness, fairness and transparency is possible, and we are determined to help make it a reality. In a flourishing data economy, all sectors will have new ways to generate value. Sovereignty means making independent and well-informed decisions about our digital interactions: where data is stored, how it is processed, and who can access it. Data spaces make these principles concrete, and we are committed to helping them grow.”
“The data economy presents a transformative opportunity, especially in sectors like sustainability, energy, and social welfare. By harnessing the power of data management and sharing, we can revolutionize how resources are allocated. At the heart of this evolution is technology which acts as a catalyst for empowering individuals through knowledge. This not only fosters innovation but also ensures equitable access to the benefits of technological advancements, playing a critical role in elevating communities and enriching the quality of life across the board.”
Data spaces are essential to the European Data Union Strategy, opening access to high quality data in a way that is trusted, interoperable and fair. What excites me most is how data spaces can transform data held in silos into shared value, empowering organizations to collaborate without losing control. As Europe moves toward more data- driven innovation and AI, the opportunity lies in helping every actor participate confidently in this growing ecosystem.
In our 21st century economy, efficiency gains and innovation are increasingly being driven by AI-powered solutions. The data fueling AI algorithms is like a spark igniting the oil that powers our cars and machines. In this context, data spaces offer a compelling proposition for igniting Europe’s digital economy: they facilitate access to the abundance of data surrounding us, but which is distributed across many data holders. And it’s done in a way that preserves freedom, sovereignty, and fairness in data sharing. If you’re interested to explore further how you can reap the benefits of Europe’s data spaces, please get in touch.
The Common European Data Spaces mark a turning point in Europe’s digital transformation. What once sounded visionary is moving to operation, proving how vital trusted data exchange, interoperability and clear governance are for digital transformation of industries. Many organizations still sit on untapped data, and data spaces offer a pathway to meaningful and AI-ready value, provided participants invest in capability and recognize the opportunities. Our next challenge? Greater awareness and widespread adoption.
FAQs:
What is a data space?
The Data Spaces Support Centre (DSSC) describes a data space as follows: “A distributed system defined by a governance framework that enables secure and trustworthy data transactions between participants while supporting trust and data sovereignty. A data space is implemented by one or more infrastructures and enables one or more use cases”.
What is the DSSC?
The Data Spaces Support Centre is funded by the European Commission as part of the Digital Europe Program. It comprises a consortium of partners, including Capgemini Invent, who explore the needs of data space initiatives, define common requirements and establish best practices to accelerate the formation of sovereign data spaces as a crucial element of digital transformation in all areas.
Who are the DSSC consortium partners?
Capgemini Invent, Fraunhofer, IDSA, BDVA, GaiaX, FIWARE, MyData, TNO, KU Leuven, VTT, University of Galway.
Why is the EU investing in data spaces?
The ability to share data securely is a central pillar of the European Strategy for Data. In creating common data spaces, the European Commission aims to allow data to flow within the EU and across sectors in collaborative data ecosystems. This will enable data sharing in a trustworthy and secure environment and is aimed at facilitating value creation. The ultimate goal is that, collectively, these ecosystems will form a single European data space, creating a genuine single market for data.
What does the DSSC report cover?
The DSSC report details the findings of a comprehensive maturity assessment exploring Europe-wide progress of 14 data spaces spanning multiple EU Member States. This was the first DSSC consolidated maturity assessment of its kind and evaluated each European initiative across four key dimensions:
– Business: including business model and use case development, data space offerings, and intermediaries/operators (where relevant)
Governance and legal: including organizational structure and governance authority, participation management, regulatory compliance, and contractual frameworks
– Technical: covering data interoperability, data sovereignty and trust, access and usage policy enforcement, publication and discovery mechanisms, and value creation services
– Operational: focusing on participation levels and transaction volumes.
What leading proponents of data space initiatives are there?
In February 2026, the DSSC announced the winners of the first ever European Data Spaces Awards. Among the finalists were Catena-X, a collaborative data ecosystem for the automotive value chain, and data.gouv.fr, a shared public data ecosystem across key societal domains. The ultimate winners were DjustConnect, an agri-food data space focused on transparency and farmer ownership, and sphin-X e.V., a collaborative healthcare data space.
