The influence of data on the economy

Data has become an essential and strategic element of the economy of any country; a fundamental asset to boost innovation, efficiency and economic development of all productive sectors. They are, for example, the basis for AI to learn, improve and enable us to make decisions.

According to the study European Data Market Study 2024-2026, carried out by the European Commission and published in May 2024, there is an accelerated growth of the Data Economy in Europe:

• Revenue generated by data companies in the EU-27 will exceed €115 billion by 2025, which is +11.6% over 2024.
• Data monetization is also intensifying, with an expected growth of 15% year-on-year by 2025.
• It is estimated that the data economy contributes 630,000 million euros to the EU GDP in 2025 (4.7% of GDP), reaching 815,000 M€ in 2030 (5.6% of GDP) under the base scenario.

In this context, Spain ranks among the leading countries in the European data market, repeatedly ranking in the Top 5 in indicators such as income in the sector, number of supplier and user companies, data professionals, monetization and data flows. This evolution points to a sustained growth until 2030, accompanied by the structural challenge of continuing to reduce the talent gap and raise the levels of maturity in the use of data.

From the data of the EDM 2024-2026, a prominent position of Spain in the different indicators emerges, as summarized in the following table:

(Source: Data extracted from the study “European Data Market 2024–2026”)

European data policy has evolved substantially since the adoption of the European Data Strategy in 2020, shifting the focus from specific macroeconomic forecasts towards a structural framework oriented towards the 2030 horizon. The European Union currently articulates its approach to data through a coherent set of strategic and regulatory instruments, including the Data Governance Act, the Data Act and the deployment of European Data Spaces, aligned with the objectives of the Digital Decade 2030.

In this new context, the European Commission supports decision-making in empirical evidence and in periodic market monitoring studies, such as: European Data Market Study 2024-2026, which incorporate scenarios up to 2030 to measure the evolution of the European data ecosystem. In particular, the 2024–2026 report estimates, in its base scenario, that data economy in the EU-27 would achieve in 2030 a value of 815.108 M€, with an impact equivalent to about 5.6% of GDP; in parallel, it projects that Income of data companies they would surpass 148.925 M€ and that European Data Market would be located in 125.502 M€. Likewise, the same study predicts an increasing weight of the monetization of data within the market, which in base scenario would represent in 2030 around 37% of expenditure and would reach 46.4 billion euros.

This framework and these magnitudes reinforce the role of data as a structural lever of competitiveness and productivity, and guide public policies towards the creation of sustainable value, safe reuse, consolidation of sectoral ecosystems and the reduction of barriers to cross-border data exchange until 2030.