Our submission to the European Commission’s consultation on the Data Union Strategy

On July 18, we submitted our response to the European Commission’s consultation on the new Data Union Strategy. This new strategy builds upon the 2020 European Data Strategy, with the same goal of facilitating data sharing. Data availability, access and use is one of the key issues, and the Commission proposes a focus on the use of data for AI development.

Our submission proposes a European Data Commons as a balanced solution that supports economic value creation while protecting public interest objectives and fundamental rights. This is in line with our contributions to the previous strategy, which advocated for creating a Public Data Commons for business-to-government data sharing.

We emphasize that data use for AI development needs to be purposeful and sustainable. We also outline a data-driven pathway to AI development focused on public interest goals, and argue that a dedicated data infrastructure for generative AI development is needed.