Upcoming stakeholder workshops in October and November will focus on business and governance design. Stay tuned for more information!
In October and November 2026, CEADS will organise a series of online national and EU-level stakeholder workshops to present and test the business and governance models currently being developed in Work Package 3 (WP3). The aim is to gather structured feedback from key stakeholders and use it to further refine how CEADS should operate in practice.
The Common European Agricultural Data Space (CEADS) is an EU initiative that aims to enable trusted, interoperable, and governed cross-border data sharing across the agri-food sector. It seeks to connect data holders and data access seekers, such as agri-food businesses, technology providers, public authorities, and researchers, so that data can be accessed and reused in a secure and legally compliant way. CEADS is therefore not a single national platform and not a new central data-sharing initiative. Instead, it is intended as a European-level layer that can connect existing initiatives and make cross-border agricultural data use feasible in practice. It is also not merely a conceptual exercise: CEADS is being developed as an implementation project aimed at delivering a real and operational European agricultural data space.
Against this background, stakeholder input is especially important at this stage of the project. The upcoming workshops are designed to ensure that the CEADS models being developed in WP3 are grounded in real operational needs, national realities, and practical sectoral experience.
From model development to stakeholder validation
The workshops build directly on WP3’s earlier work. In 2025, WP3 carried out 24 interviews with data intermediaries, 8 interviews with use case leaders, and developed preliminary work to develop a business model and a governance model design options. In 2026, the project is moving from preparatory analysis to broader stakeholder engagement.
The next step is to present the emerging business and governance design options to relevant stakeholders and ask for feedback before key decisions are finalised. This means that workshop participants will not be asked to comment on abstract principles alone. Rather, they will be invited to respond to concrete model components and implementation choices.
The workshops are being organised specifically to help answer questions such as: Are the proposed roles and responsibilities realistic? Are the incentives strong enough for participation? Are the governance safeguards credible? What risks, burdens, or barriers still need to be addressed? And what would make CEADS workable and valuable in practice?
Two workshop streams: business and governance
To support more focused discussion, CEADS is organising separate workshop streams on business and governance.
The business workshops will focus on issues such as the value proposition of CEADS, participation incentives, funding and sustainability models, the role of intermediaries, and conditions for scaling and long-term viability. The central question here is how CEADS can create and sustain real value for participating actors without imposing unnecessary burdens.
The governance workshops will focus on decision-making structures, access rules, accountability, risk management, compliance, dispute handling, and trust mechanisms. These sessions are intended to explore how CEADS can be governed in a way that is both operationally feasible and sufficiently robust to inspire trust among participants.
Together, these two streams reflect a core insight of the project: CEADS will only work if it is both valuable and trusted. A workable business model without credible governance will not be enough, and neither will governance arrangements that do not support a sustainable and attractive participation model.
Why stakeholder participation matters
The CEADS team is inviting stakeholders because their experience is essential for improving the current design. Across both workshop streams, participants are expected to contribute practical insights on incentives, responsibilities, confidentiality, liability, access conditions, interoperability, compliance, and trust.
Stakeholder participation matters because CEADS must reflect the practical realities of agricultural data sharing. It must be feasible, with workable roles and processes. It must be trusted, with clear safeguards and accountability mechanisms. And it must be valuable, generating concrete benefits for participants while avoiding unnecessary complexity or administrative burden.
The workshops are therefore not simply dissemination events. They are a genuine opportunity for stakeholders to influence how CEADS develops. Participants will be able to raise concerns, identify requirements, and help refine the choices that will shape the future implementation of CEADS across Europe.
Interactive online format
The workshops will be held online via Teams and are designed as 2-hour interactive sessions. Each session will include a short introductory presentation, followed by written feedback collection through tools such as Mentimeter, smaller interactive discussions, and a final open discussion. This format is intended to make participation efficient while still allowing for structured and meaningful input.
To support open exchange, workshop outputs will be handled with care. Individual comments will not be attributed by name in reporting. Instead, findings will be synthesised and shared in aggregated, non-attributable form. The workshops will also be conducted in line with applicable research ethics and data protection requirements.
Looking ahead
These workshops mark an important milestone for CEADS. They represent the point at which the models developed within WP3 are opened up to wider stakeholder scrutiny and improvement. By combining national workshops with EU-level exchange, CEADS aims to gather both country-specific and cross-European perspectives on how the future agricultural data space should function.
In this sense, the workshops are an important step toward ensuring that CEADS is not designed in isolation, but with direct input from the actors who may one day use, govern, and benefit from it.
