Norwegian participation in European data spaces

Prepared in May 2026. Based on a combination of the European Commission’s overviews, the projects’ own pages, IDSA’s Data Spaces Radar and an internal Digdir mapping. See Sources at the end for a full overview.

Overview

The table covers the European Commission’s Common European Data Spaces (the 14 sectoral/horizontal domains under the European strategy for data), supplemented with defence (a new addition from the Data Union Strategy, November 2025) and two adjacent initiatives (DestinE and DTO) that are not formally part of the data space list, but are closely related and have Norwegian participation.

The Type/status column distinguishes between the Commission’s own data spaces and adjacent initiatives, so that the list can include the relevant neighbouring initiatives without presenting them as equivalent to the sectoral data spaces.

Norwegian participation per data space

1. Health (EHDS)

For Norway, this is an area with broad participation. Actors such as Helsedirektoratet (the Norwegian Directorate of Health), the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (FHI), Oslo University Hospital, Norsk Helsenett, Oslo Cancer Cluster and the universities of Bergen and Oslo are involved in various parts of the health data ecosystem. As an EEA country, Norway’s connection to the EHDS Regulation itself is a separate question that depends on its incorporation into the EEA Agreement.

2. Agriculture (CEADS)

We are not aware of any Norwegian actors involved in CEADS. Absence of hits does not necessarily mean absence of participation, but Norwegian agriculture is not currently visible in the project’s core consortium.

3. Industry/manufacturing

Norwegian actors in the manufacturing data space include UiO. Sm4rtenance may also have a Norwegian partner among its 47 participants, but we have not verified this.

4. Finance (EFDS)

We are not aware of any Norwegian actors involved in the financial data space.

5. Mobility (EMDS)

We are not aware of any Norwegian actors involved in deployEMDS. The Radar lists the predecessor PrepDSpace4Mobility with Norway in the country field, but the specific Norwegian connection has not been verified.

6. Green Deal

For Norway, this is an area with participation: SINTEF is a partner in SAGE, and the research institute NILU is also listed as a Norwegian actor under Green Deal.

7. Energy (CEEDS)

Energy is the area where Norway is most clearly represented. NORCE (Norwegian Research Centre) is a partner in OMEGA-X — the project’s general assembly was held at NORCE’s premises in Bergen in March 2025. NODES, the Norwegian marketplace for flexibility and electricity, is a partner in DATA CELLAR. In addition, Smart Innovation Norway is listed as a Norwegian actor in energy.

8. Public administration

For Norway, Sikt and DFØ are listed as Norwegian actors in public administration.

9. Competences/skills

We are not aware of any Norwegian actors involved in the skills data space. The use cases of the known deployment projects are so far concentrated in countries such as France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Finland, Belgium, Luxembourg and Greece. At the same time, this is an area with an open opportunity right now — see How to get involved.

10. Cultural heritage

For Norway, Kulturdirektoratet (Arts and Culture Norway) is the national aggregator for Norwegian content in Europeana, where Norwegian material makes up about 8.4% of the content. Norway participates through the EU’s Connecting Europe Facility – Digital.

11. Language (LDS)

We are not aware of any Norwegian actors involved in the language data space.

12. Media (TEMS)

For Norway, Media City Bergen is listed as a Norwegian actor in media.

13. Research and innovation (EOSC)

Norway is broadly represented here, with the universities of Bergen and Oslo, Sikt, HK-dir, Sigma2, SINTEF, Svalbard Integrated Arctic Earth Observing System (SIOS), NTNU and CESSDA ERIC.

14. Tourism (ETDS)

We are not aware of any Norwegian actors involved in ETDS. At the same time, this is an area with an open opportunity right now — see How to get involved.

15. Smart cities/communities (DS4SSCC)

Norway is well represented here, particularly through the GEO4Water pilot: SINTEF Digital, the Norwegian Meteorological Institute, the University of Oslo, BLB AS (Bente Lilja Bye) and Oslo kommune/Osloregionen IPR (the City of Oslo and the Oslo Region). Note that GEO4Water is a pilot under the deployment action, not necessarily a full consortium partnership in DS4SSCC-DEP.

16. Defence (DAIDS)

No Norwegian actor has been found in the defence data space, and its status is in any case too early for participation to be relevant for most.

17. DestinE (Destination Earth)

Norway participates concretely: the Norwegian Meteorological Institute, together with the Finnish FMI, delivers improved wave and vessel icing forecasts for the Barents Sea via the Weather-Induced Extremes Digital Twin. Norway is also a member of EUMETSAT. A DestinE ML gathering was also held in Norway (Losby Gods, March 2025), organised by ECMWF and the Norwegian Meteorological Institute.

18. DTO (Digital Twin of the Ocean)

Norwegian organisations are heavily involved, particularly SINTEF Ocean, through several DTO-related projects: DTO-BioFlow (which aims to activate “dormant” biodiversity data), Iliad, TURTLE (interoperability architecture, led by SINTEF Ocean), CLIMAREST and SEADOTs. It is worth noting that SINTEF Digital was also behind the national IDS-based project MDS – Maritime Data Space, which is relevant if the mapping is to be extended to national data spaces.

Sources and caveats

The overview builds on several layers of sources that are combined to give as complete a picture as possible. The websites for each data space are listed in the main table and are not repeated here.

The European Commission and horizontal frameworks

• The European Commission’s overview of Common European Data Spaces — digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/data-spaces
• Data Union Strategy (November 2025) — the source for defence being added as a new data space
• Overview of upcoming DIGITAL calls (Skills, Tourism, EHDS, etc.) — digdir.no, “Er du klar for de siste rundene med DIGITAL-utlysninger?” (Are you ready for the final rounds of DIGITAL calls?)
• Data Spaces Support Centre (DSSC) — dssc.eu
• SIMPL, common middleware for data spaces — simpl-programme.ec.europa.eu
• SEMIC Support Centre, semantic interoperability — joinup.ec.europa.eu/collection/semic

Norwegian participation — Digdir’s mapping

In November 2025, Digdir (the Norwegian Digitalisation Agency) published the blog article “Norsk deltakelse i europeiske dataområder” (Norwegian participation in European data spaces), which summarises the findings of a mapping of Norwegian participation. It states that the EU has 14 data spaces with a total of 68 “implementations” (concrete data collaborations), and that Norwegian actors participate in seven of the areas and in 22 of the implementations. The article is the public reference for the overall picture.

The underlying detailed mapping — with named Norwegian actors per data space — is an internal Digdir piece of work that has not been published and cannot be verified by external readers. The figures per actor in the mapping have not been checked against other sources. Our review also revealed at least one gap: Kulturdirektoratet, which is the national aggregator for Europeana, was not included — and it is likely that other actors are also missing, particularly in rows that are shown here without a Norwegian actor.

Data Spaces Radar

IDSA’s Data Spaces Radar (dataspaces-radar.org) is a voluntary, self-registered catalogue under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence. Filtered on “Countries = Norway”, the Radar returned eight entries as of May 2026, of which two (NODES in DATA CELLAR and NORCE in OMEGA-X) have been verified as actual Norwegian partners and included in the main table under energy.

The Radar’s country tagging is not always accurate. Several entries appear to be tagged with Norway without there being a Norwegian partner — for example iDDEN (International Dairy Data Exchange Network), whose own partner list contains no Norwegian organisations, and Data Finland, which is a Finnish national initiative. The Radar may thus over-report Norwegian participation in individual entries, while under-reporting overall Norwegian EU activity (several of the actors in the main table are not represented in the Radar).

Verification of Norwegian participation

Norwegian actor affiliations have been verified against the projects’ own pages and other public sources where possible. The most important individual sources are:

• SINTEF’s own project page on SAGE (Green Deal) — sintef.no
• Osloregionen IPR on the GEO4Water project under DS4SSCC — osloregionen.no
• Regjeringen.no (the Norwegian Government) on Norwegian participation in Europeana via CEF Digital and Kulturdirektoratet as national aggregator — regjeringen.no
• Zabala Innovation and Enlit World on NODES as a partner in DATA CELLAR
• EUMETSAT on MET Norway’s role in the DestinE Weather-Induced Extremes Digital Twin — eumetsat.int
• iDDEN’s own partner list, checked directly (no Norwegian partners — relevant because the Radar tags iDDEN with Norway) — idden.org

For agriculture, finance, mobility, skills, language and tourism, we are not aware of any confirmed Norwegian participation. Absence of hits does not necessarily mean absence of participation — partner lists are not always well indexed, and verification against the projects’ own full partner lists remains to be done.

Mechanisms for engagement

The following sources have been used for the chapter on engagement:

• Public Procurement Data Space (PPDS) and the EXEP working group — the European Commission, public-procurement-data-space.europa.eu
• OECD “Leveraging the EU PPDS” (Technical Support Instrument) — oecd.org
• DS4SSCC Stakeholder Forum — ds4sscc.eu, contact: [email protected]
• DSSC Community of Practice and Strategic Stakeholder Group — dssc.eu
• IDSA, Gaia-X, BDVA and FIWARE — the four data sharing associations and their national hubs, including Gaia-X Hub Norway and FIWARE iHub Norway
• The DIGITAL programme’s calls and deadlines — digdir.no, contact: [email protected]

Caveats

Delimitation from adjacent initiatives. DestinE and DTO are not formally among the Commission’s Common European Data Spaces — they are separate flagship initiatives (under DG CNECT and the EU Mission “Restore our Ocean and Waters”, respectively). They are included because they are closely related and have concrete Norwegian participation, but are marked as adjacent in the Type/status column.

The count depends on convention. The Commission officially states “14 sectors/domains”. The list here shows more because smart cities/communities is listed separately (it is often counted among the 14), defence has been added as a new domain, and two adjacent initiatives are included. Digdir’s own mapping works with 14 data spaces and reports Norwegian participation in seven of them; our overview shows participation in somewhat more, partly because we have captured cultural heritage and smart cities as well as the adjacent initiatives.

A national track worth noting. SINTEF Digital (Arne J. Berre) was responsible for the national IDS-based Norwegian data space project MDS – Maritime Data Space. If the overview is also to cover national (not just European) data spaces, this should be followed up.