News and highlights

Every year on 24 January, the International Day of Education reminds the world of education’s central role in global development. Since its proclamation by the United Nations General Assembly in 2018, the day has highlighted how access to quality education supports peace, reduces inequalities and drives progress for communities everywhere. The right to education was already recognised in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights , which calls for free and compulsory primary education for all children. This principle was strengthened in 1989 through the Convention on the Rights of the Child

The data.europa academy is the official learning platform of The European Data Portal. It is a free knowledge and training hub for anyone working with, or interested in, open data. We are continuously striving to ensure that the academy meets your needs and provides you with the bestlearning experience. Looking ahead to the 2026 academy year, much remains familiar: we will continue to organise webinars every month, exploring new and enriching themes. But this year also brings something entirely new. Early in 2026, we will introducenew features with a major update we have been developing to

The recently improved open data maturity inter ac tiv e website offers a refreshed, interactive way for policymakers, data professionals and citizens to explore how European countries are progressing in their open data journey. Designed to make the yearly assessment easy to navigate, the interactive website brings together scores, country profiles and key insights in a single user-friendly interactive website. A core functionality of the interactive website is its interactive visual dashboard. Users can explore country’s maturity scores across the four dimensions of the assessment – po licy

Companies all across Europe spend significant time on administrative tasks, inhibiting focus on innovation and slowing cross-border activity. To address this, the European Commission has created European Business Wallets , a harmonised digital solution designed to simplify how businesses identify themselves, authenticate themselves and exchange data across Europe. The initiative was formed as part of the Commission’s 2025 Digital Package and aims to reduce administrative burden for many organisations . The Business Wallet will enable companies to manage their key documents digitally, including

Get ready to mark your calendar for our upcoming data.europa academy webinar ‘Smart cities and digital twin technology: the case of Bologna’ on Friday, 23 January 2026, from 10:00 to 11:00 CET. Following the previous smart city webinars on Rotterdam and Dublin, this third edition will highlight the Bologna Digital Twin project. Urban digital twins are playing an increasingly relevant role in city governance processes, raising key questions about how data, models, and artificial intelligence systems are produced, governed, and made accessible to public actors and the wider community. By

The new year has just begun, making it a good moment to reflect on the data.europa academy’s achievements in 2025. Over the past year, we hosted 18 webinars covering a wide range of topics. We kicked off with a session on the European Data Strategy and continued with themes such as Open judicial data, AI, and transparency in the digital age . One of the highlights was the three-day data visualisation workshop with Alberto Cairo, who showed over 2600 participants how to build meaning from data, communicate insights clearly, and give the right context through effective visual storytelling. The

Croatia’s national open data portal, data.gov.hr , is designed to make public sector information accessible and reusable for everyone. The portal serves as a central hub for datasets published by government institutions, supporting transparency and enabling citizens, businesses, and researchers to benefit from open data. The portal provides access to more than 3,000 datasets across domains such as economy and finance , government and public sector , and population and society . Users can find information on government spending, demographic statistics, energy consumption, and environmental

We are thrilled to share the findings from our 2025 User Survey, an initiative which helps deepen our understanding of the wants and needs of the European Data Portal’s users. From Monday, 1 September, to Sunday, 13 October 2025, we invited you to share your thoughts on how you use our portal and what matters most to you. The response was incredible, and your feedback is already guiding the next steps towards improving the European Data Portal. One key trend revealed that for most of the respondents (39%), the main source of open data is the European Data Portal. The survey confirmed what we

The 2025 Open Data Maturity (ODM) assessment has been published, providing the latest overview of how European countries are advancing in making public sector information more accessible, reusable and impactful. This 11th edition assesses 36 countries, including all 27 EU Member States, three members of the European Free Trade Association and six candidate countries. The ODM continues to serve as an essential reference for tracking progress, identifying emerging trends and supporting peer learning across Europe. Progress is visible across all four dimensions of the assessment: policy, portal

As 2025 is slowly coming to an end, the European Data Portal team extends our warmest holiday greetings to all our data providers and the open data community. We have marked another year full of great milestones and achievements to celebrate together. This year has brought us closer together and enabled new partnerships and learning opportunities, which allowed us to spread the wealth of knowledge behind open data far and wide. We are grateful for your continued support and engagement in our data community in 2025. This year, the European Data Portal transformed itself to ensure a more user