CERTAIN and the DICE Alliance showcase semantic compliance at EBDVF 2025
Building on the success of the DICE Alliance’s strategic launch at the AI, Data & Robotics Forum (ADRF) in September, the CERTAIN project presented its approach to semantic compliance at the European Big Data Value Forum (EBDVF) 2025 in Copenhagen from November 12-14.
Alongside fellow DICE Alliance partners, DataPACT, ACHILLES, and ACCOMPLISH, CERTAIN participated in the critical session “Semantics & Compliance: Enabling Trustworthy Data/AI in European Data Spaces” on Friday, November 14, showcasing how semantic technologies and compliance-by-design methodologies are operationalising European values across diverse sectors.
Semantics & Compliance: Enabling Trustworthy Data/AI in European Data Spaces
The session highlighted how ontologies, semantic models, and formal methods are reshaping Europe’s approach to regulatory compliance in the data and AI economy. As European regulations such as the AI Act, GDPR, and Data Act reshape the digital landscape, the four DICE Alliance projects are demonstrating that semantic approaches can translate complex legal requirements into actionable technical implementations.
CERTAIN’s contribution focused on leveraging ontologies to map legal compliance requirements into system architectures, enabling technical assessments that cover both AI model integrity and social, scientific, and human (SSH) dimensions, as well as environmental dimensions of compliance.
By integrating semantics through the Semantic ML Engine, using a bottom-up and top-down Ontology development method, coupled with the CERTAIN regops and connection to Data Spaces, CERTAIN and its partners are advancing a common European approach to compliance-by-design that is scalable, explainable, and embedded into the core of data ecosystems.
The DICE Alliance at the EBDVF
The DICE Alliance’s presence at EBDVF 2025 underscored a broader strategic vision: developing interoperable frameworks, harmonised standards, and shared governance models that will scale across critical sectors, including health, mobility, finance, and manufacturing.
The session’s moderated panel discussions revealed both the transformative potential and practical challenges of semantic compliance, addressing how compliance automation supports ethical and transparent AI operations, reduces the burden of regulatory adherence, and ensures cross-sectoral interoperability.
As the European Commission continues to prioritise digital sovereignty and trustworthy AI innovation, the DICE Alliance’s collaborative efforts to embed compliance, ethics, and sustainability into the very foundation of European data spaces position these projects as essential contributors to Europe’s digital and green transition.
