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Regulatory Sandboxes in Finance and Energy: Best Practices for Implementing the European Data Spaces
Graef,Inge Buljević,Din
Graef,Inge
Buljević,Din
Abstract
One of the policy dilemmas that the EU is facing in regulating data is how to facilitate data sharing to foster data-driven innovation, while also ensuring safe and secure data processing in line with European values. Data-driven innovation is expected to boost economic growth and bring societal benefits, for example through personalised healthcare and improved energy efficiency. But European values may sometimes require restrictions in data processing – for instance to protect personal data, to uphold intellectual property rights and to prevent collusion through the exchange of commercially sensitive information. How to balance these values against the interest in data sharing is a dilemma at the heart of the ‘European data spaces’. The premise of the chapter is that the use of regulatory sandboxes may help overcome the dilemma between the need for data sharing and the need for protecting data. Regulatory sandboxes allow businesses to test innovations in a controlled environment under a regulator’s supervision. With legal safeguards in place to protect consumers, regulatory sandboxes incentivize businesses to introduce innovations by letting them experiment with new services and allow regulators to build expertise to balance the tension between promoting regulatory goals and enabling innovation. The context of the European data spaces is more complicated than earlier applications of regulatory sandboxes, which mainly focused on innovations triggering only one domain-specific regime. Data-driven innovations are peculiar in this regard because they trigger several regimes at the same time and require the involvement of domain-specific as well as general regulators in areas such as data protection and competition. By analysing existing experiences with regulatory sandboxes in finance and energy, the chapter provides insights into how regulatory sandboxes can be effectively implemented in such a more complex environment as the European data spaces.
Description
Date
2026
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Publisher
Hart Publishing
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Keywords
Data sharing, Regulatory coordination, Proportionality, Data protection, Competition, Intellectual Property, SDG 10 - Reduced Inequalities
Citation
Graef, I & Buljević, D 2026, Regulatory Sandboxes in Finance and Energy: Best Practices for Implementing the European Data Spaces. in S Ruhela, O Hrynkiv & S Lavrijssen (eds), Regulatory Strategies for Energy and Finance: Sustainability in a Digitalised World. Hart Publishing, pp. 87-102. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781509987511.ch-005
License
info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess