Together with Senadin Alisic (Strategy Advisor, Combitech AB, Sweden), Detlef Eckert (Founder Deep Digital Consulting B.V., Author of “40 Years of European Digital Policies”, Belgium) and Insuk Kim (President of Korean-German Association of Economics and Management (KDGW), CEO of HANDA Forum, South Korea), it was discussed how data spaces can be shaped into sovereign data ecosystems on the basis of open standards and thus form the basis for a trusting and global data economy.

Insuk Kim emphasizes the special importance of Gaia-X for economic cooperation between Korea and Europe. She is currently working on applications and solutions between European and Korean companies in the fields of smart cities, manufacturing, health and energy.

Digital ecosystems form the basis for a competitive and self-determined digital economy. Standard-compliant, sovereign data spaces form the basis for being able to assert oneself in the competition of global value chains. This session showed how Gaia-X can support companies by using the Gaia-X Trust Framework to use data in a trusted, sovereign manner and across company and national borders.

Against the backdrop of geopolitical tensions and increasing platform dependency, the panelists underlined the urgency: Sovereign data infrastructures are not a “nice-to-have”, but essential for economic sustainability, innovative strength and digital resilience. With Gaia-X, a growing network is developing that combines technological solutions, regulatory principles and international cooperation. The session at the #IDSF25 made it clear that data sovereignty is not an abstract vision, but a global community project – and Gaia-X is an active driver of this change.