Finland’s IT centre for science CSC has urged the EU to treat data as its most valuable resource. Europe must recognise data as its most critical resource for innovation and develop its own web index to compete with American tech giants, Finland’s IT Centre for Science CSC has argued in a statement released ahead of the forthcoming European Innovation Act.

The Finnish organisation has called on EU policymakers to prioritise data infrastructure and skills development in the upcoming legislation, warning that Europe risks falling further behind in the global innovation race without access to comprehensive data resources.

In its statement, CSC argues that today’s most transformative innovations emerge from combining vast amounts of data from diverse sources, making data “the most valuable raw material of innovation”. Yet European researchers and companies currently lack the infrastructure and resources to fully exploit this potential, the organisation contends.

Central to CSC’s proposals is the development of a European web index – essentially a vast library catalogue tracking all open web content. At present, only non-European tech giants possess such indices, giving them near-complete control over search engine markets and access to web data.

“Having Europe develop its own web index would make European innovators more competitive and less reliant on non-European actors,” the statement notes, pointing to work already undertaken by the Open Web Search project as a foundation.