European data spaces constitute pro-competitive infrastructures deliberately designed to align with EU competition law objectives. Unlike proprietary ecosystems that risk entrenching market dominance, data spaces embed neutrality, openness, and non-discrimination into their architectural design, thereby addressing market contestability through governance frameworks rather than ex post regulatory intervention. The main argument advances that data spaces represent a transformative "soft-market intervention" that shifts competitive dynamics from exclusive data hoarding to innovation-based rivalry on shared datasets. The paper demonstrates how data spaces extend the principle of free movement to data as a potential "fifth freedom" within the EU internal market, while their federated governance structure prevents any single participant from monopolizing data access or determining participation terms. Through ex ante pro-competitive design, data spaces reconcile the need for large-scale data aggregation with competition law safeguards, enabling economies of scale and scope without creating dominance risks. The technical infrastructure emphasizes interoperability by design, federated cloud architecture, and open standards that prevent vendor lock-in and foreclosure effects. By providing structured alternatives to proprietary data marketplaces controlled by dominant gatekeepers, European data spaces demonstrate how institutional architecture can embed pro-competitive safeguards into market design itself, while fostering digital sovereignty and sustainable competitive advantage within the EU's evolving data economy.
Effimia Styliani Konstantopoulou (Fri,) studied this question.