Viewpoint: Europe’s data strategy risks leaving some behind

Participation in the Common European Data Spaces (CEDS) varies across member states in parallel with disparities in research and innovation capacity, economic development and regulatory frameworks.

This disparity in capacity between east and western Europe is a brake on the full realisation of a unified data sharing framework across the EU. The involvement of industry, academia, and civil society organisations in the policy making process for CEDS is important, but their level of participation is also uneven across member states.

In countries with well-established research systems, these sectors are more actively engaged and contribute to the development of CEDS. However, in countries like Romania, Poland, and Bulgaria engagement is limited, hindering balanced progress in the initiative.

To ensure a unified and equitable success for CEDS, lessons learned from Horizon 2020 must guide policymakers to address these disparities. Targeted funding, regulatory reforms, and improved metrics for academic evaluation are necessary to boost participation by less-developed research systems.

Since the adoption of the European Data Strategy in 2020, Horizon Europe and Digital Europe have funded shared digital environments. The creation of CEDS is a work in progress, and different milestones have been achieved in different fields, according to the European Commission staff working document published in January 2024. From providing access to automatic speech-to-text transcriptions in different languages, to the creation of a portal catalogue indexing datasets and software tools under the European Open Science Cloud, progress has been achieved in building more integrated data driven research across Europe. Eastern Europe continues to lag behind in both shaping and benefiting from these efforts.

What lessons can we draw from the implementation of Horizon Europe, and how can we shape research policy to effectively inform policymaking processes?

Collaboration frequency

While the Digital Europe programme only began in the current programming period, Horizon Europe has precursors. The most recent,  Horizon 2020 showed the added value of the programme to the single market, however the frequency of collaboration was highest among countries with well-established research and innovation systems. High levels of collaboration led on to the formation of strong networks. Countries with smaller domestic research systems tried to collaborate with each other, and often partnered with at least one of the most research and innovation-intensive nations.

This pattern reflects a broader divide between east and western Europe, where the disparities in economic development influence the level of research and innovation engagement. This is inevitably influencing the development of Common European Data Spaces, raising the question, can lessons learned from the implementation of Horizon 2020 promote a unified innovation strategy across such a heterogeneous region?

Scientific quality is highly dependent on access to original data and shared, distributed datasets. Although the EU is a global leader in the sheer volume of scientific output, it has historically lagged behind the US in producing top quality research. Although this gap has been narrowing in recent years, there is still progress to be made. Scientific excellence remains concentrated in a select group of leading countries, primarily located in northwest Europe. Meanwhile, despite recent progress, southern, eastern, and Baltic nations continue to rank at the lower end of the scale.

Historically, countries such as Romania, Poland, Bulgaria and Portugal, which have been classified as “low performing” in research and innovation, have struggled with brain drain. Although these countries have benefited from Marie Skłodowska-Curie funding initiatives that allowed researchers to return to their home countries if they chose, there is still a long way to go before notable results are seen on the ground.

From the implementation of Horizon 2020, it is clear that some geographical disparities exist that could potentially widen the gap between high performing countries and low performing countries in all areas: journal publication, SMEs participation in research and innovation and university rankings.

In Horizon 2020, countries including Germany, the Netherlands, the UK, France, Italy, and Spain established the most extensive networks for co-publications, including open science initiatives. Meanwhile, Romania, Croatia, and Greece are only beginning to increase their participation in such collaborations.

Horizon Europe has significantly increased the budget for Widening country participation to 3% and introduced various measures to boost their engagement. The effect of this can be undermined by national regulations, such as fluctuating academic evaluation criteria or the requirement to increase student enrollment before universities can hire new staff. The number of university teaching staff has been increasing year by year throughout the EU, but not in central and eastern Europe.

According to the report ‘Higher Education Area in 2024’, most education systems saw increases in staff numbers of approximately 15% - 20% between 2016 and 2021, but most central and eastern European countries registered significant decreases. Lithuania, Ukraine, Romania, Slovakia, Estonia, Bulgaria and Moldova struggle to attract and retain talent, grappling with the challenges of brain drain.  Of all countries that registered a fall in numbers, the largest was in Moldova at minus 16%, while in Romania it was around minus 5%. Taking this into account, achieving consistent engagement across all member states in other initiatives, including the development of Common European Data Spaces, remains a challenge.

Evidence-based policy

In addition to evaluation metrics that focus solely on bibliometric indicators, a significant portion of work is often overlooked when assessing performance: evidence-based policy papers tailored to national contexts. These policy inputs with significant social impact, related to climate change or public health, contribute to local development and the engagement with policy. Steps have been taken to reform the research evaluation system, including the formation of the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment, bringing together a diverse group of research organisations with the aim of maximising the quality and impact of research

If Common European Data Spaces are effectively and uniformly implemented across the EU, it would be beneficial to develop evaluation indicators that go beyond citations, to also consider teamwork, teaching, and impact on local communities. Traditional metrics may overlook progress in Widening countries and contributions to increasing Europe’s competitiveness and for equal implementation of the Common European Data Spaces, it is essential to understand the resources gaps between the member states and the divide between east and west Europe.  

Vasile Alecsandru Strat is dean of the Bucharest Business School, and is associate professor in the Department of Statistics and Econometrics within the Faculty of Cybernetics, Statistics and Economic Informatics