21 November 2025 – Porto, Portugal – Gaia-X concludes its 2025 Summit with a major milestone for Europe’s digital future: the formal release of the Gaia-X Trust Framework 3.0 – “Danube”, a breakthrough that introduces domain and geographic extensions, enabling trust to be federated across diverse ecosystems and compliance regimes. With the Danube release, Gaia-X delivers the technical foundation required to scale trusted data spaces and support Europe’s ambition for sovereign, interoperable, and AI-ready digital infrastructures.
The Summit brought together leaders from European institutions, industry, and technology to reflect on the concrete progress made since Gaia-X’s founding. Representing the European Commission, Thibault Kleiner, Director for Future Networks at DG CONNECT, underscored the broader context of Europe’s digital strategy: “We have achieved a lot in the past years in terms of data spaces, standards, data brokerage and legislative support. The time has come to scale up and federate our data spaces and build a European data ecosystem that will power AI and boost EU competitiveness.”
Reflecting on the outcomes of the Summit, Ulrich Ahle, CEO of Gaia-X, stated: “This Summit marks a decisive step forward for Gaia-X and for Europe’s digital future. We are moving from first pilot implementations to true operational deployment, where data spaces, trust frameworks, and interoperability tools are now ready to scale. With the Danube Release and the progress shown across all sectors, Gaia-X is proving that Europe can build a trusted, sovereign digital ecosystem that enables innovation while keeping control of data and AI firmly in European hands.”
The introduction of the Danube Release was at the centre of the Summit. Alongside the updated specifications, Gaia-X also presented the Architecture Document (AD) and Compliance Document (CD), each incorporating substantial enhancements designed to automate trust and streamline interoperability.
Christoph Strnadl, CTO of Gaia-X, highlighted the architectural significance of the new extensibility model: “The updated Architecture Document and the new Danube software components define and implement a unified extensibility mechanism that allows arbitrary ecosystem rulebooks to be automated in a technically compatible way. It also enables extended identification schemes, which together provide the technical basis for true cross-ecosystem trust. With this, we are no longer talking about isolated compliance regimes. We are enabling – for the first time ever – a federation of interoperable digital ecosystems.”
On the operational side, the Compliance Document delivers new functionality designed to reduce complexity and support scalable descriptions of digital services. Roland Fadrany, COO of Gaia-X, emphasised its practical impact: “The Gaia-X Trust Framework underpins this vision by providing verifiable identities, compliance mechanisms, and digital clearing houses that ensure sovereignty, transparency, and cross-border recognition. Data Space Governance Authorities (DSGAs) can define their own rules (“Bring Your Own Rules”), enabling automated compliance with sector-specific or regional regulations.
This framework supports cross-sector ecosystems—from mobility and energy to smart cities and manufacturing—enabling automated compliance, secure identity management, and seamless service orchestration, ultimately making data sovereignty practical and accessible on users’ own terms.”
The Summit also served as an opportunity to reaffirm Gaia-X’s alignment with Europe’s industrial priorities. Catherine Jestin, Chairwoman of the Gaia-X Board and Executive Vice President Digital at Airbus, reflected on the strategic importance of data spaces and the Gaia-X Trust Framework: “Digital sovereignty is the capacity to control one’s digital destiny. For aerospace and defence, this relies on protecting intellectual property, ensuring business continuity, mastering our technology stack, and limiting vendor lock-in. Data spaces such as DECADE-X are critical instruments to achieve this. Gaia-X plays a central role because its Trust Framework enables participants to collaborate and exchange data securely, automatically, and across borders. This is why Gaia-X has never been so important. It is a key component of Europe’s digital sovereignty and of the operational success of emerging data spaces.”
The Summit’s high-level roundtable on Season Two of Data Spaces, moderated by Catherine Jestin, signalled a turning point for Europe’s data economy. Joined by Thibaut Kleiner of DG CONNECT, Ernst Stöckl-Pukall of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy, and Amandine Reix of the French Direction Générale des Entreprises, the panel examined how Europe can move beyond pilots toward a truly connected and scalable data ecosystem. Building on the achievements of recent years—more than 15 European data spaces, emerging standards, legislative support and federated tooling—the speakers emphasised the need to accelerate consolidation, ensure economic viability, and strengthen cross-sector interoperability. The discussion underlined a clear message: Season Two must deliver operational, sustainable, and federated data spaces capable of powering Europe’s industrial competitiveness and future AI leadership, anchored in trust and digital sovereignty.
At the Summit, Data4NuclearX and Decade-X demonstrated how strategic European industries are operationalising the Gaia-X Trust Framework to secure their digital futures in the nuclear and aeronautic sectors.
One of the Summit’s most anticipated sessions, the Catalogue of Gaia-X Compliant Services on the Market, highlights how a growing number of services and providers are embracing Gaia-X principles of transparency, interoperability, and trust. From cloud infrastructure to domain-specific data services, the catalogue illustrates how companies can increasingly choose solutions aligned with European values of sovereignty, openness, and verifiable trust, such as Cloud Temple, Thésée DataCenter, OPIQUAD, OVHcloud, and Seeweb, which are the first 5 companies to obtain Gaia-X Label level 3.
Gaia-X is also happy to share the creation of a new Hub: Gaia-X Hub Digital Trust Canada (DTC). This marks an important step forward in strengthening international collaboration around data sovereignty, interoperability, and trusted digital ecosystems
Following two days of presentations, technical sessions, and showcases, the Porto Summit closed with broad consensus: Gaia-X has entered a new phase of maturity. The release of Danube — together with the enhanced Architecture and Compliance Documents — equips Europe with a robust, extensible, and scalable foundation for trusted collaboration across sectors and geographies.
As data spaces continue to emerge across manufacturing, aerospace, nuclear energy, health, and other strategic domains, Gaia-X now provides the mechanism by which these ecosystems can interoperate confidently and transparently, fostering an environment where trust becomes automated, sovereignty becomes actionable, and Europe’s digital future can be built on solid, shared foundations.
Sébastien Lescop, CEO of Cloud Temple has stated: “This week marks an important step for Europe. The Summit on European Digital Sovereignty and the Gaia-X Summit have demonstrated a shared commitment to building a trusted, interoperable digital ecosystem for our continent. With Gaia-X, we now have a concrete, collaboratively developed framework that brings together institutions, providers, and, above all, users. By becoming the first company to achieve the highest level of certification, Gaia-X Label level 3, Cloud Temple is proud to contribute to the foundations of a trusted digital infrastructure that will support Europe’s ambitions for the years ahead.”
Gaia-X extends its sincere appreciation to the partners who played a key role in making this Summit a success. Our gratitude goes to Cloud Temple, deltaDAO, neusta aerospace, and IRT SystemX. whose expertise, commitment, and continuous contributions have strengthened the Gaia-X ecosystem and accelerated the deployment of trusted, interoperable data spaces across Europe and beyond.