European Union: European Commission published Communication on the Data Union Strategy - Unlocking Data for AI

On 19 November 2025, the European Commission published the Data Union Strategy - Unlocking Data for AI, presenting a strategic framework that identifies three priority areas for increasing the availability of data for AI development. The three priorities consist of scaling up access to data for artificial intelligence, streamlining data rules to facilitate data sharing, and strengthening the European Union’s global position on international data flows by tackling unjustified trade barriers. These priorities are based on challenges identified by the Commission, namely data scarcity, regulatory complexity, and global competition. For each priority, the Commission set out planned actions, including scaling up common European data spaces and data labs, synthetic data resources, proposing a Cloud and AI Development Act focused on data centres, sovereign cloud, and AI services, streamlining existing data rules, and promoting fair cross-border data flows and the protection of sensitive non-personal data.