Data Strategy Briefing — June 9, 2020

Executive briefing: On 9 June 2020, the Council of the European Union adopted conclusions on the European data strategy (document 8714/20). The text endorses the European Commission's February 2020 communication on a European strategy for data and sets out political guidance for creating common European data spaces, strengthening data governance, and accelerating standards that keep the internal market competitive and trustworthy.

Context and objectives

The Council conclusions respond directly to the Commission communication COM(2020) 66 final, published 19 February 2020, which proposed a single European data space underpinned by interoperability, data portability, and a harmonised regulatory framework. By June 2020, member states wanted to lock in a roadmap that would transform high-level goals into concrete steps: rapid deployment of sectoral data spaces, consistent enforcement of the GDPR, reliable cybersecurity, and investment in cloud-to-edge capacity. The document ties these goals to the EU's green and digital transitions, recognising data as essential infrastructure for climate action, industrial innovation, and resilient public services.

Detailed takeaways

Key commitments

• Common European data spaces: Member states urge the Commission to move quickly on sector-specific spaces in health, mobility, manufacturing, energy, agriculture, finance, public administration, the Green Deal, and skills. The Council backs interoperable architectures so that common rules on semantics, metadata, and APIs allow data to circulate across borders and sectors without undermining legal protections.
• High-value datasets: The conclusions call for the swift adoption of a delegated act under the Open Data Directive to ensure high-value public sector datasets—such as geospatial, earth observation, statistics, mobility, and environmental data—are available for free re-use in machine-readable formats through APIs.
• Research and innovation: The Council stresses the need for FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) principles and open science policies to make research data widely usable, while preserving intellectual property and confidentiality. It encourages linking research infrastructures with industrial data spaces to speed up commercialisation of research outputs.
• Timeline for legislation: The text welcomes the Commission's plan to table a Data Governance Act in 2020 to improve trust and data intermediaries, followed by a 2021 legislative proposal on data access and use. These acts are expected to clarify conditions for business-to-government and business-to-business data sharing, define data altruism mechanisms, and prevent vendor lock-in.

Governance and safeguards

The Council repeatedly anchors the data strategy in EU fundamental rights and competition law. It insists that any new framework must respect the GDPR, the ePrivacy rules, intellectual property rights, trade secrets, and consumer protection. The conclusions advocate a risk-based approach to anonymisation and pseudonymisation, strong cybersecurity requirements (including security-by-design for cloud and edge services), and certification schemes to boost trust. Member states also encourage the Commission to work with ENISA, the European Data Protection Board, and national competition authorities to monitor systemic risks such as market concentration in cloud infrastructure and unfair access conditions.

To keep governance coherent, the Council invites the Commission to create coordination fora that join data protection authorities, standardisation bodies, and sector regulators so that guidance on interoperability, lawful processing, and data sharing is consistent. It also points to the importance of trusted data intermediaries and voluntary data altruism organisations to channel data for public interest uses like public health and climate mitigation.

Industry impact and infrastructure

The conclusions underline that digital competitiveness depends on European capacity to process and store data. They call for sustained funding under the Connecting Europe Facility, Digital Europe Programme, and Horizon Europe for high-performance computing (HPC), edge computing, and secure cloud federations. Member states support the European Cloud Federation initiative and the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking to deliver exascale-level computing and quantum-ready architectures. They urge procurement and state-aid rules that allow joint investments in energy-efficient data centers and sovereign cloud services that meet EU cybersecurity certification schemes.

The Council also presses for clear rules on data portability and interoperability so that SMEs can switch providers without prohibitive costs, reducing lock-in risks. It supports common standards for industrial data platforms, including reference architectures that combine real-time streaming, digital twins, and edge analytics. In manufacturing and mobility, the conclusions cite the need for harmonised access conditions for vehicle, equipment, and maintenance data to spur aftermarket innovation while maintaining safety and liability frameworks.

International dimension

Although the strategy is inward-looking, the Council highlights the need for international data flows consistent with EU law. It encourages the Commission to promote European standards in multilateral fora and in bilateral trade discussions, while using adequacy decisions and contractual safeguards to protect personal data. The conclusions note that global competitiveness requires interoperable standards for AI training datasets, cybersecurity baselines, and cross-border digital trade that align with EU values and strategic autonomy goals.

Sector-specific notes

The Council recognises different maturity levels across sectors and sets expectations tailored to each:

• Health: Fast-track the European Health Data Space to support cross-border ePrescriptions, secure secondary use of health data for research and crisis response, and robust governance for genomic and medical imaging data. The conclusions reference the COVID-19 context to emphasise interoperable solutions and privacy-preserving analytics.
• Mobility and transport: Create interoperable data sharing for connected vehicles, public transport, and smart logistics, aligned with the ITS Directive and type-approval rules. Access to vehicle data should balance driver consent, safety, and fair competition in aftermarket services.
• Energy: Encourage smart metering data access and interoperability to enable demand-response services, grid optimisation, and integration of distributed renewables. Cybersecurity and resilience are flagged as preconditions for critical energy infrastructure.
• Agriculture: Promote common data models for farm management systems, satellite imagery, and sensor data to improve sustainability monitoring and precision agriculture, while protecting farmers from unfair contractual terms in data sharing.
• Finance: Align open finance initiatives with payment services rules and anti-money laundering requirements, ensuring high-assurance digital identities and secure APIs for data portability.
• Public sector and Green Deal: Combine environmental monitoring data, geospatial services (INSPIRE), and Copernicus earth observation outputs to accelerate climate reporting, urban planning, and disaster response. Public administrations are encouraged to open non-sensitive datasets by default and to adopt interoperable digital identity and trust services.

Implementation signals and metrics

The Council asks the Commission to report progress regularly and proposes measurable indicators. These include uptake of common standards, the number of operational data spaces, the volume of high-value datasets published via APIs, and SME participation in cloud and edge projects. It also highlights the need for skills development through reskilling programmes, cross-border data steward training, and digital education initiatives funded by Erasmus+ and the Digital Europe Programme.

On funding, member states stress that the Multiannual Financial Framework and the Next Generation EU recovery instrument should prioritise data infrastructure, cybersecurity, and AI, with transparency on how projects contribute to strategic autonomy and climate targets. They also suggest using Important Projects of Common European Interest (IPCEI) to scale cloud and microelectronics capabilities.

Risks and mitigations

The Council is explicit about risks: market dominance by a few cloud providers, uneven enforcement of the GDPR, and fragmentation from incompatible national data initiatives. To mitigate this, it recommends coordinated supervision and procurement guidelines that avoid lock-in, mandatory interoperability standards in publicly funded projects, and improved cross-border enforcement cooperation among data protection and competition authorities. It also calls for clear guidance on lawful grounds for data sharing, especially when combining industrial data with personal data.

What to watch next

Following the June 2020 conclusions, stakeholders should monitor: (1) the delegated act on high-value datasets under the Open Data Directive; (2) the legislative proposals on data governance (later adopted as Regulation (EU) 2022/868); (3) the 2021 Data Act proposal on fair access and use of data; (4) the design of cloud and edge certification schemes under the EU Cybersecurity Act; and (5) progress on the European Health Data Space, which the Commission proposed in 2022. Each milestone will clarify obligations for interoperability, data access rights, and safeguards for business secrets and personal data.

Why this matters

The Council's conclusions convert the European data strategy from a vision into an action plan. They give companies a clearer view of impending interoperability requirements, open-data obligations, and certification expectations for cloud and edge services. Public administrations receive guidance on default openness and cross-border cooperation, while citizens benefit from stronger assurances that reuse of their data will be governed by strict rights-preserving frameworks. For organisations building products or services in Europe, the June 2020 text remains a foundational reference that anchors later legislation on data governance, data access, and digital resilience.