Alicante hosts the new edition of the Gaia-X Summit

Alicante will host the Gaia-X Summit 2023 on November 9 and 10, which will review the latest progress made by this initiative in promoting data sovereignty in Europe. Interoperability, transparency and regulatory compliance acquire a practical dimension through the exchange and exploitation of data articulated under a reliable cloud environment.

It will also address the relationships established with industry leaders, experts, companies, governments, academic institutions and various organisations, facilitating the exchange of ideas and experiences between the various stakeholders involved in the European digital transformation. The event will feature keynotes, interactive workshops and panel discussions, exploring the limitless possibilities of cooperative digital ecosystems, and a near future where data has become a high value-added asset.

This event is organised by the european association Gaia-X, in collaboration with the  Spanish Gaia-X Hub. It also counts with the participation of the Data Office the project is being developed under the auspices of the Spanish Presidency of the Council of the European Union. The project is being developed under the auspices of the Spanish Presidency of the Council of the European Union.

The Gaia-X initiative aims to ensure that data is stored and processed in a secure and sovereign manner, respecting European regulations, and to foster collaboration between different and heterogeneous actors, such as companies, governments and organisations. Thus, Gaia-X promotes innovation promotes innovation and data-driven economic development in Europe. The open and collaborative relationship with the European Union is therefore essential for the achievement of its objectives.

Digital sovereignty: a Europe fit for the data age

As for Gaia-X, one of the major objectives of the European Union is to to promote digital sovereignty throughout the European Union. To this end, it promotes the development of key industries and technologies for its competitiveness and security, strengthens its trade relations and supply chains, and mitigates external dependencies, focusing on the reindustrialisation of its territory and on ensuring its strategic digital autonomy.

The concept of digital sovereignty encompasses different dimensions: technological, regulatory and socio-economic. The technology dimension refers to the hardware, software, cloud and network infrastructure used to access, process and store data. Meanwhile, the regulatory dimension refers to the rules that provide legal certainty to citizens, businesses and institutions operating in a digital environment. Finally, the socio-economic dimension focuses on entrepreneurship and individual rights in the new global digital environment. To make progress in all these dimensions, the EU relies on projects such as Gaia-X.

The initiative seeks to create federated, open, secure and transparent open, secure and transparent ecosystems, where data sets and services comply with a minimum set of common rules, thus allowing them to be reusable under environments of trust and transparency. In turn, this enables the creation of reliable, high-quality data ecosystems, with which European organisations will be able to drive their digitisation process, enhancing value chains across different industrial sectors. These value chains, digitally deployed on federated and trusted cloud environments ("Trusted Cloud"), are traceable and transparent, and thus serve to drive regulatory compliance and digital sovereignty efforts.

In short, this approach is based on building on and reinforcing values reflected in a developing regulatory framework that seeks to embed concepts such as trust and governance in data environments. This seeks to make the EU a leader in a society and economy where digitalisation is a vector for re-industrialisation and prosperity, but always within the framework of our defining values.

The full programme of the Summit is available on the official website of the European association: https://gaia-x.eu/summit-2023/agenda/.