Gaia-X Enters “Season Two” of Data Spaces and Digital Ecosystems with the 2025 Summit

Gaia-X has wrapped up its 2025 Summit with a significant step forward for Europe’s digital landscape: the official launch of the Gaia-X Trust Framework 3.0 – “Danube”. This new release introduces both domain-specific and geographic extensions, allowing trust to be federated across a wide range of ecosystems and regulatory environments.

With Danube, Gaia-X delivers the technical underpinnings needed to scale trustworthy data spaces and to strengthen Europe’s pursuit of sovereign, interoperable, and AI-ready digital infrastructure.

After attending the Helsinki Summit in 2024, the Gaia-X framework and vision has indeed matured at great speed, and efficacy. Data is still the king in Europe, and the harnessing of this empirical power is key to European sovereignty and power.

The Summit gathered senior figures from European institutions, industry, and the technology sector to assess the tangible progress made since Gaia-X was founded.

Speaking on behalf of the European Commission, Thibault Kleiner, Director for Future Networks at DG CONNECT, highlighted the broader ambitions of Europe’s digital agenda:

“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 Summit’s achievements, Ulrich Ahle, CEO of Gaia-X, remarked:

“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.”

At the heart of the Summit was the introduction of the Danube Release. Alongside the updated specifications, Gaia-X unveiled new versions of the Architecture Document (AD) and the Compliance Document (CD), each substantially enhanced to automate trust and simplify interoperability.

Christoph Strnadl, CTO of Gaia-X, underlined the architectural relevance of the new extensibility approach:

“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.

Bring Your Own Rules: With Danube, the Gaia-X framework is compatible with rules and criteria that almost no one knows and no one has heard of.

From an operational perspective, the updated Compliance Document introduces functions that simplify complexity and support scalable service descriptions. Roland Fadrany, COO of Gaia-X, emphasised the 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 reaffirmed Gaia-X’s alignment with Europe’s industrial goals. Catherine Jestin, Chairwoman of the Gaia-X Board and Executive Vice President Digital at Airbus, stressed the strategic value of data spaces and the 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.”

A high-level roundtable on Season Two of Data Spaces, moderated by Catherine Jestin and featuring Thibaut Kleiner (DG CONNECT), Ernst Stöckl-Pukall (German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy), and Amandine Reix (French Direction Générale des Entreprises), marked a turning point in Europe’s data economy. Building on achievements including more than 15 European data spaces, emerging standards, supporting legislation, and federated tools, the speakers called for greater consolidation, economic sustainability, and stronger cross-sector interoperability.

The shared conclusion was clear: Season Two must deliver truly operational, scalable, and federated data spaces that can underpin Europe’s industrial competitiveness and future AI leadership, rooted in trust and digital sovereignty.

During the event, Data4NuclearX and Decade-X demonstrated how European strategic industries are already implementing the Gaia-X Trust Framework to secure digital capabilities in the nuclear and aerospace sectors.

One of the most anticipated segments of the Summit was the unveiling of the Catalogue of Gaia-X Compliant Services, showcasing the growing number of services aligned with Gaia-X principles of transparency, interoperability, and trust.

From cloud platforms to specialised data services, the catalogue shows how organisations can increasingly select solutions that reflect European values such as sovereignty and verifiable trust. Cloud Temple, Thésée DataCenter, OPIQUAD, OVHcloud, and Seeweb were announced as the first five companies to achieve Gaia-X Label level 3.

Gaia-X also announced the establishment of a new hub: Gaia-X Hub Digital Trust Canada (DTC), marking an important expansion of international cooperation around data sovereignty, interoperability, and trusted ecosystems.

After two days of presentations, technical discussions, and demonstrations, the Porto Summit concluded with a clear message: Gaia-X has entered a new stage of maturity. The Danube Release, combined with the enhanced Architecture and Compliance Documents, provides Europe with a robust, extensible, and scalable basis for trusted collaboration across industries and national borders.

As data spaces continue to evolve across manufacturing, aerospace, nuclear energy, health, and other critical sectors, Gaia-X now offers the mechanism for these ecosystems to interoperate securely and transparently, ensuring that trust can be automated, sovereignty made operational, and Europe’s digital future constructed on firm, shared foundations.

Sébastien Lescop, CEO of Cloud Temple, commented:

“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 expressed its sincere thanks to the partners who supported the Summit, including Cloud Temple, deltaDAO, neusta aerospace, and IRT SystemX, whose expertise and continued commitment have strengthened the Gaia-X ecosystem and accelerated the roll-out of trusted, interoperable data spaces across the digital ecosystems of Europe and beyond.

About Gaia-X:

Founded in 2021 as a privately funded, not-for-profit association, Gaia-X brings together an international community of industry, academia, and public actors to establish shared standards for transparent, controllable, and interoperable technologies. Its goal is to unlock unprecedented opportunities for innovative, data-driven business models while reducing reliance on non-controllable technologies.