Galway, Ireland | 30 September 2026
CERTAIN joined the European Big Data Value Forum (EBDVF 2026) in Galway to take part in a session of the DICE Alliance (Data, Innovation, Compliance, Ethics), focused on turning European data and AI rules into working tools.
One year of the DICE Alliance
The DICE Alliance was launched exactly one year ago at EBDVF 2025 in Stavanger, Norway. It addresses a persistent gap: Europe has the rulebook, including the GDPR, the Data Governance Act, the Data Act and the AI Act, but organisations often lack the practical tooling and evidence needed to apply these rules without slowing down innovation.
CERTAIN is proud to be one of the four Horizon Europe projects behind the alliance, together with ACCOMPLISH, ACHILLES and DataPACT.
Deploying Trustworthy AI and Data Spaces: from research to industrial adoption
The Galway session, “Deploying Trustworthy AI and Data Spaces: Compliance Technologies from Research to Industrial Adoption,” brought together perspectives from ACCOMPLISH, CERTAIN, DataPACT and the Data Spaces Support Centre (DSSC). It explored how compliance can move beyond requirements and become technically actionable across data spaces, data pipelines and AI systems.
Erica Cascone, Communications Lead at Digital for Planet, opened by presenting the DICE Alliance, its journey so far and why it matters. Europe’s data and AI rules are too broad for any single project to tackle alone, so the alliance brings projects together to turn them into shared, practical solutions.
The discussion then covered:
- Automated compliance assessment and enforcement
- Machine-readable policies and regulatory requirements
- Data and AI governance
- Moving from research and pilots towards industrial adoption
- Opportunities for collaboration across the European data spaces ecosystem
- Making Compliance by Design a practical reality
CERTAIN’s first outcomes
Izidor Mlakar, from the University of Maribor, presented the first outcomes of CERTAIN. He focused on the real-world implementation of certification and trustworthy AI across the wide range of sectors where AI is applied, from biometrics, health, energy and banking to human resources, data and IT.
Thank you
We thank all the speakers and contributors, Erica Cascone, Fenareti Lampathaki, Izidor Mlakar, Nikolay Nikolov and Savvas Rogotis, and Till Christopher Lech for moderating the panel. Thanks also to BDVA for hosting the forum.
With CoGNETs
During the event, CERTAIN also collaborated with the CoGNETs project, which held its own EBDVF 2026 session on 1 October. Experts from CoGNETs, FRAME and ENACT discussed how AI can remain secure, trustworthy and responsible when data flows across devices, edge systems and the cloud, particularly in healthcare and critical services.
Looking ahead
From Stavanger 2025 to Galway 2026, the DICE Alliance has moved from building a community to exploring how compliance technologies can support real-world adoption. CERTAIN will continue to contribute its certification and trustworthy AI work to this effort.