Gaia-X is a European initiative that aims to create a federated, secure, and transparent data infrastructure. Essentially, a “European cloud ecosystem” that promotes data sovereignty and interoperability among cloud service providers, users, and sectors.
The vision of the Gaia-X project
Gaia-X was launched in 2019 by the governments of Germany and France (now supported by many EU member states and industries). Its main goal is to ensure that European companies and citizens retain control over their data, instead of relying solely on large non-European cloud providers (like AWS, Google Cloud, or Azure).
The vision of the project is to:
Build a federated system of cloud and data services where users can combine different providers securely, transparently, and in compliance with European values — especially GDPR, privacy, and data sovereignty.
How Gaia-X works
Gaia-X isn’t a single cloud platform. Instead, it’s a set of standards, frameworks, and governance principles that let existing cloud providers interoperate and exchange data safely. It regulates:
- Federation Services: Define how identity, trust, compliance, and service descriptions work between participants.
- Data Spaces: Sector-specific frameworks for secure data sharing (e.g., health, energy, finance, manufacturing.)
- Open Standards: Promote APIs and metadata standards to enable portability and interoperability between providers.
For example, a company could host data on a German data center, use analytics services from a French provider, and AI services from Spain, all while ensuring that data use complies with European transparency and control rules.
The key components of Gaia-X
- A federated catalog: a directory of compliant service providers and data offerings.
- An identity and trust framework: a framework that ensures verifiable credentials and certification of providers.
- Compliance rules: rules ensuring GDPR, cybersecurity, and transparency obligations.
- Data sovereignty mechanisms: tools for specifying who can access and use shared data.
How is Gaia-X different from the traditional cloud?
Gaia-X doesn’t compete with AWS or Azure directly: instead, it provides a governance and interoperability layer that even large hyperscalers can join if they meet European transparency and data-sovereignty standards.
| Aspect | Gaia-X (Federated model) | Traditional cloud (hyperscalers) |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture | Federation of multiple independent cloud and data providers following shared technical and legal standards. | Centralized platforms owned and controlled by a single vendor. |
| Data location and sovereignty | Data remains under the customer’s jurisdiction (e.g., EU), with clear control over where it’s stored and how it’s shared. | Data may be stored across global regions; users have limited control beyond provider-offered location options. |
| Interoperability | Encourages cross-provider compatibility and data exchange through open standards and APIs. | Generally proprietary; vendor lock-in is common due to unique APIs and services. |
| Governance and trust | Managed by an open, non-profit association (Gaia-X AISBL) with transparent certification and compliance rules. | Governed by the vendor’s internal policies; customers must trust the provider’s compliance claims. |
| Security framework | Built on European cybersecurity and privacy regulations (GDPR, NIS2, EUCS). | Security standards vary by provider and may follow global frameworks (e.g., ISO 27001, FedRAMP). |
| Business model | Open ecosystem: providers of all sizes (startups, SMEs, national clouds) can participate if compliant. | Closed ecosystem controlled by hyperscaler pricing, APIs, and service availability. |
| Objective | Digital sovereignty, interoperability, and trust within Europe’s data economy. | Efficiency, scalability, and global reach. |
| Transparency | Federated catalog shows certifications, data handling practices, and SLAs. | Transparency limited to documentation and third-party audits. |
Gaia-X and cybersecurity
Gaia-X embeds security by design:
- Identity federation and verified credentials to ensure trusted participants.
- Encryption, access control, and logging standards aligned with ENISA and NIS2 directives.
- Certification based on EUCS (European Cybersecurity Certification Scheme for Cloud Services).
- Zero-trust approach: each participant must authenticate and prove compliance dynamically.
For example, if an energy company shares sensor data with a grid operator via a Gaia-X data space, both endpoints authenticate through verifiable credentials, and the data flow is encrypted and auditable end-to-end.
Gaia-X and data governance
Gaia-X defines mechanisms for data usage policies, meaning that the data owner defines who can use the data, for what purpose, and under what conditions. These rules are enforced through metadata, smart contracts, and technical policy enforcement tools. This methodology allows for full traceability of who accessed what, when, and why.
This model supports the EU’s broader Data Governance Act (DGA) and Data Act, which aim to make industrial and public-sector data reusable without compromising privacy.
Gaia-X and compliance
Each Gaia-X service must provide a Service Credential describing its compliance level, undergo continuous auditing of security, data residency, and policy enforcement, and support inter-cloud portability, allowing customers to migrate workloads freely.
An example of Gaia-X usage
Under Gaia-X, a research consortium in the health sector might:
- Store anonymized patient data in a German data center.
- Share subsets with AI partners in France and Spain through Gaia-X data spaces.
- Ensure all processing follows GDPR and that AI partners cannot repurpose the data for other projects.
- Prove compliance through Gaia-X credentials and automated policy logs.
That level of granular control and auditability is nearly impossible in traditional public clouds without custom legal and technical frameworks.
Governance
Gaia-X is managed by the Gaia-X Association for Data and Cloud (AISBL), based in Brussels, which brings together hundreds of members: governments, tech companies, research bodies, and SMEs.
Among them are Deutsche Telekom, Orange, SAP, Atos, Bosch, Siemens, cloud providers like OVHcloud and Scaleway, institutions such as Fraunhofer, CERN, and numerous EU agencies.
The importance of Gaia-X
With its principles of cyber-resilience and vendor neutrality, Gaia-X reduces the risk of single-vendor dependency, which is vital for national and strategic sectors such as healthcare, energy, and defence.
The project promotes redundancy and diversity of providers within the federation and aligns with EU digital sovereignty goals by ensuring operational independence even in the case of political or commercial conflict.
Ultimately, Gaia-X matters because it reduces Europe’s dependency on non-EU hyper-scalers. It ensures control and transparency over how data is used and stored, and enables collaboration across industries and borders. It also creates a trust framework, with a recognizable label of compliance with EU standards.