TrustED kicks off pilot phase following a productive meeting in Rome

Consortium partners meet in Rome to align on project advances, pilot deployment and next steps towards trustworthy European data spaces.

The project moves from design to real-world implementation, validating privacy-preserving and self-sovereign identity solutions.

TrustED has successfully held its consortium meeting in Rome this week, marking a major milestone as the initiative transitions from research and development to the pilot phase.

The two-day event brought together all consortium made up of 10 organizations from 5 countries (Spain, Italy, Portugal, Germany and Turkey) to consolidate technical progress and finalize the roadmap for pilot deployment across multiple European contexts.

During the sessions, the consortium aligned on pilot objectives, interoperability frameworks, and evaluation methods to ensure measurable impact. This milestone represents the beginning of a new stage where TrustED technologies will be tested in real-world environments, validating their effectiveness, usability, and compliance with European data standards.

Additionally, a dedicated session was held with members of the External Advisory Board, including Ignacio Alamillo, Alberto Pedrouzo and Pietro Bartoccioni, who provided strategic insights to strengthen the project’s direction and ensure alignment with emerging European regulations and best practices.

Testing trust in action: real-world use cases for SSI and data spaces

Over the coming months, TrustED will deploy a set of pilots designed to demonstrate how self-sovereign identity (SSI) and trustworthy data spaces can enable secure, privacy-preserving data exchange across sectors.

Each pilot will involve collaboration among citizens, service providers, and data controllers, covering diverse scenarios where digital identity and data governance play a key role. The pilots will test: Data governance and consent management, ensuring users retain full control of their information; Interoperability and standards compliance, enabling data exchange across different identity ecosystems; Privacy-preserving technologies, to minimise exposure of sensitive data; Auditability and transparency, building trust through verifiable and traceable processes.

These demonstrations aim to provide valuable insights into the technical, social, and ethical aspects of deploying SSI in operational environments. The outcomes will guide the future development of interoperable, user-centric data spaces across Europe.

Building Europe’s future of digital trust and data sovereignty

In a time when Europe is intensifying efforts to strengthen digital sovereignty and protect citizens’ privacy, TrustED contributes directly to the European Union’s strategy for secure and trustworthy data ecosystems. According to the European privacy market summary published by KPMG in 2024, 59 % of Europeans reported being more concerned about their privacy than they were five years ago.

Furthermore, the EU Recovery and Resilience Facility published by the European Parliamentary Research Service last year, has allocated over €53 billion to the digitization of public administration and e-government services (more than one-third of its total digital investment). Such large-scale investment reflects the EU’s commitment to building a trustworthy digital society: a goal that TrustED actively advances by combining cutting-edge SSI technologies with privacy-preserving infrastructures.

The discussions held in Rome underscored the partners’ shared commitment to transparency, collaboration, and impact. The project’s multidisciplinary approach (spanning technology, ethics, governance, and user engagement) ensures that the pilots will not only validate innovation but also deliver tangible value for citizens and organisations, while supporting the implementation of the European Digital Identity Framework and the European Strategy for Data.