EOSC: Empowering Europe's trusted, secure and sovereign research data ecosystem.

The European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) is a major initiative of the EU’s research and digital agendas that aims to structure Europe’s research data ecosystem into a trusted, secure and sovereign common space of high-quality, FAIR research data and related services. However, at a moment when Europe’s competitiveness and values, digital sovereignty, strategic autonomy, and data security are under unprecedented pressure, EOSC becomes far more than a research instrument: it becomes a strategic priority for the Union to build a resilient, productive and sovereign knowledge economy.

EOSC is not simply aligned with EU ambitions but, as the evolving EU policy landscape has made explicit, it is indispensable to delivering them. The launch of the EOSC Federation and the adoption of major EU strategies in the second half of 2025 have prompted the EOSC Tripartite Governance to update its March 2025 version of this narrative.

EOSC’s design and operational principles are directly in line with the strategic imperatives outlined in the Competitiveness Compass communication and the European Research Area Policy Agenda for 2025-2027. EOSC is also anchored in the European Strategy on Research and Technology Infrastructures6, the Apply AI Strategy, the European AI in Science Strategy and the European Data Union Strategy, a position reinforced by the policy recommendations coming from the Letta report, the Draghi report, and the Heitor report on the next Framework Programme (Horizon Europe 2028-2034).

As elaborated in this paper, EOSC secures Europe’s sovereignty over research data, enables a thriving AI and innovation ecosystem, increases security in research, strengthens the Single Market for knowledge, and ensures that European values—openness, trust, and fairness—remain the foundation of global collaborative science.