The EU’s Data Governance Gamble: Regulation, Reality and the Road Ahead

The European Union has positioned itself as a pioneer in data governance, introducing frameworks such as the Data Governance Act (DGA) including bespoke legal regimes for a subset of data intermediaries and advancing narratives built around European data spaces. The ambition is clear: to unlock the value of data through a federated approach, while safeguarding trust, transparency, accountability, and individual rights. Yet the path from regulation to real-world impact remains uncertain. Despite its bold vision, the DGA has already faced scepticism, not least from the European Commission itself, which launched a public consultation on the DGA this past summer. The Commission is now preparing a Data Union Strategy as a core pillar of its “AI continent” plan, “to foster a true internal market for data”. Whether this strategy can provide the missing operational backbone for the DGA, or risks layering new ambitions on top of unresolved challenges, remains an open question.

Can the DGA truly deliver on its promise, or is it structurally doomed to underperform? What should we expect from the Data Union Strategy? What institutional, technical, and legal conditions would be required to make the EU vision work in practice? And how might the EU approach to data governance evolve to ensure that data spaces and intermediaries generate both public value and economic innovation?

By addressing these questions, this webinar seeks to examine what it would really take for the EU’s data governance vision to succeed.

Speakers: Gianfranco Cecconi (International Data Spaces Association & Data Spaces Support Centre), Manlio Bacco (European Commission, Joint Research Centre), Bernard Cornet (Data Joy) and Barbara da Rosa Lazarotto (BPH, LSTS, VUB)

Moderator: Sophie Stalla-Bourdillon (BPH, LSTS, VUB)

Register to the webinar here