The European Union has launched its 'European Strategy for Data'. The 35-pages long document describes the Union's main goals, challenges and perspectives related to the furthering of its data economy. Its overarching goal is to elevate the European Union's data economy to a size and relevance proportional to its weight in in the world economy while maintaining high environmental standards and guaranteeing to all European citizens a strong protection of their privacy rights. Other important objectives include the creation of an enabling legislative framework for the governance of common European data spaces by the end of 2020, making more high-quality public sector data available for re-use, in particular in view of its potential for SMEs, and to provide incentives for horizontal data sharing across sectors through a 'Data Act (2021)'. Overall, the Strategy represents the European Union's strong wish to maintain itself competitive in the global economy, through a coherent Data Governance framework in a moment when its digital economy was considered by many to be lagging behind that of the United States and China.