Data marketplaces across Europe currently rely on bespoke, incompatible systems that make it difficult for businesses, public administrations, and citizens to share or sell data under clear, fair terms. UPCAST will build a set of universal software plugins that automate the entire process of data exchange—from negotiating pricing and usage terms to ensuring privacy and legal compliance. The project consolidates existing research in data management, automated negotiation, and privacy into practical tools that can plug into any existing data marketplace or platform. Four real-world pilots across Europe will test these plugins in operation. If successful, UPCAST could remove a major barrier to the Common European Data Spaces initiative. Small and medium enterprises, local governments, and individual citizens would gain the ability to trade data on equal footing with large technology companies, without needing legal teams or custom software. The system also accounts for environmental efficiency and compliance with EU AI regulations. The result would be a genuinely interoperable European data economy where data flows securely and fairly between sectors, rather than being locked inside proprietary platforms.
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UPCAST provides a set of universal, trustworthy, transparent and user-friendly data market pluginsfor the automation of data sharing and processing agreements between businesses, public administrations and citizens. Our plugins will enable actors in the common European data spaces to design and deploy data exchange and trading operations guaranteeing (i) automatic negotiation of agreement terms, (ii) dynamic fair pricing, (ii) improved data-asset discovery, (iii) privacy, commercial and administrative confidentiality requirements, (iv) low environmental footprint, as well as ensuring compliance with (v) relevant legislation and (vi) ethical and responsibility guidelines. UPCAST will support the deployment of Common European data spaces by consolidating mature research in the areas of data management, privacy, monetisation, exchange and automated negotiation, considering efficiency for the environment as well as compliance with EU and national initiatives, AI regulations and ethical procedures. Four real-world pilots across Europe will operationalise a set of working platform plugins for data sharing, monetisation and trading, deployable across a variety of different data marketplaces and platforms, ensuring digital autonomy of data providers, brokers, users and data subjects, and enabling interoperability within European data spaces. UPCAST aims at engaging SMEs, administrations and citizens by providing a transferability framework, best practices and training to endow users in order to deploy the new technologies and maximise impact of the project
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