Europe and Japan are advancing trusted data exchange through Data Spaces and Data Free Flow with Trust, respectively. Europe is establishing industry-wide Data Spaces in several key sectors (like Health, Mobility, and Energy), while Japan focuses on enabling secure data sharing across entities.
O-CEI adopts Data Space technology as a foundation for its Cloud-Edge-IoT Continuum, referencing initiatives like Gaia-X, IDSA, and implementations such as SIMPL and EDC.
On April 4th, during the “Towards Interoperable Data Spaces – Practical Considerations” workshop, Martin Bauer (NEC Laboratories) will present a case study on the Experience of implementing an EU-Japan cross-data space.
Due to the need for technology sovereignty of the countries and regions, EU and Japan have developed their own protocol stacks for creating data spaces. Given the strongly connected economies, the need for connecting different data spaces across borders has become obvious. This project is probably one of the first experiments that is connecting a Japanese data space with a European Data Space using a technology concept nowadays called Data Space Intermediaries. The guiding use case is carbon accounting along the supply chain of a product assembled from parts in Japan and the EU. The talk will report on the technical approach taken and will also highlight fundamental problems in data space concepts and related standards that prevent a 100% legally compliant connection of the two data spaces.
