Last week, from 4-5 February 2025, CIRPASS-2 partners attended the Data Sharing Festival in The Hague, Netherlands, to explore Europe’s progress in adopting and scaling data spaces, while delving deeper into the development of Digital Product Passports (DPPs) and related CIRPASS-2 project activities.
The festival explored key topics like data sharing privacy, cybersecurity, and sovereignty in an ever-changing digital landscape. Attendees were able to engage in insightful keynotes, panels, and many interactive sessions involving key experts and representatives from the European Commission and Dutch ministries.
This event was co-organised by Centre of Excellence for Data Sharing & Cloud (CoE-DSC), Gaia-X Association for Data and Cloud (AISBL), TNO, Topsector ICT, Basis Data Infrastructuur (BDI), the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs, and the International Data Spaces Association (IDSA)—and a sponsorship from Sovity.
Panel & breakout discussions on DPPs
The second day of the festival focused more specifically on Digital Product Passports (DPPs) in a series of specific plenaries and breakout sessions.
In particular, A panel discussion “Digital Product Passports: use cases and regulation” highlighted the challenges and opportunities in DPP adoption, scaling, and implementation on a large (global) scale. The panel offered a valuable opportunity for a fruitful and impactful dialogue between European Commission representatives Alexandru Ion (DG GROW) and Sotirios Kanellopoulos (DG ENV) and CIRPASS-2 consortium members, including Project Coordinator Carolynn Bernier (CEA), Nikolaos Saklampanakis (Fujitsu), and Sjoerd Rongen (TNO).
Furthermore, the afternoon breakout session on Digital Product Passport technology development in CIRPASS-2 attracted significant attention, filling the room to capacity with festival attendees eager to learn more. Led by CIRPASS-2 project partners, the session provided a deep dive into the project’s achievements and ongoing work, highlighting the means for achieving cross-sectoral semantic interoperability and how CIRPASS-2 lighthouse pilots are collaborating towards this goal. The strong turnout underscored the growing interest and urgency in adopting DPP technologies.
🌐 Visit the Data Sharing Festival website: https://data-sharing-festival.net/
