The coronavirus pandemic has revealed the ever-increasing need for data flows within the EU and across sectors for economic and health recovery. Likewise, the European Strategy for Data, has outlined plans to develop an agile EU data economy, including the launch of Common European Data Spaces (CEDS).

Dr. Photini Vrikki is lecturer of Digital Media and Culture at the King’s College London and Fellow of the Charlemagne Prize Academy 2020/2021. Her research project focusses on the question what solidarity-based approaches would mean for the creation of common European data spaces. In her first project paper, she looks at the links between CEDS and policy development to offer an understanding of how solidarity-based approaches can advance clear and trustworthy data governance mechanisms. The concept of ‘common data spaces’ has widely been lauded in the EU as a progressive alternative to traditional data exchange infrastructures, which have faced heavy criticism in the last decade for their oligopolistic, black-box algorithmic market, controlled by US- and China-based tech giants.

This project argues that current and future EU policy should go beyond legal frameworks, to include solidarity mechanisms in these newly proposed CEDS. Interrogating the social and cultural dimensions of CEDS contributes to a growing body of literature that seeks to repoliticise the collection, storing, processing, and use of data and promotes a transparent policy framework for Europe’s digital sovereignty.

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