Europe’s tech sovereignty strategy needs an open standard for corporate ownership data

The European Commission’s new technological sovereignty package places open source and open standards at the centre of Europe’s digital future.

Alongside investments in semiconductors, cloud infrastructure and artificial intelligence, the package’s Open Source Strategy recognises that Europe needs open, interoperable digital ecosystems if it is to reduce dependencies, strengthen resilience and build genuinely European digital infrastructure.

One area where this principle could deliver immediate benefits is beneficial ownership information.

Across Europe, governments, regulators, banks, procurement authorities and businesses all need access to reliable information about who ultimately owns and controls companies and trusts.

Yet beneficial ownership data remains fragmented. Different countries collect information in different formats, making cross-border analysis difficult and limiting interoperability between systems.

The solution is not simply to exchange more data. It is to exchange data using a common open standard.

Data standards are the plumbing of digital sovereignty. Without them, the EU’s multi-pronged policy goals will remain siloed, vulnerable to vendor lock-in, and hindered by fragmented data.

The Beneficial Ownership Data Standard

The Beneficial Ownership Data Standard (BODS) was built to solve exactly this problem.

BODS is the world’s leading open standard providing a specification for modelling and exchanging information on the beneficial ownership and control of companies, trusts and other types of entities and arrangements.

Developed since 2016 by Open Ownership in partnership with Open Data Services, BODS provides a complete data model for representing who owns and controls legal entities and legal arrangements — handling direct and indirect ownership, trusts, nominee relationships, temporal changes and complex multi-layered corporate structures as machine-readable, structured data.

BODS is endorsed by the World Bank, OECD, UNODC and G7 governments including the UK and Canada. It is already in use by the central registers of Armenia, Bermuda and Botswana, and the UK has formally adopted it as its open standard for beneficial ownership data.

Connecting the dots of EU policy

An open standard for corporate ownership and beneficial ownership information isn’t just a technical tool; it is the connective tissue for several major EU initiatives currently being built which I’ve written about:

• Buying European and seeing through shell companies: If the EU wants to successfully implement “buy European” procurement strategies, it must be able to verify who actually owns bidding entities. An open standard makes corporate structures machine-readable across borders, allowing public buyers to look past complex webs of shell companies instantly.
• The rise of ‘EU Inc’: As the EU moves toward creating a single set of rules for a new class of European businesses (“EU Inc”), interoperability must be baked in from day one. BODS provides a ready-made blueprint to ensure data collected on these new entities is transparent, trusted and easily verified across all 27 member states.
• Securing the European Business Wallet: The vision of storing high-quality, trustworthy UBO data directly inside European Business Wallets relies entirely on data integrity. An open standard ensures that the data fed into these decentralised wallets is standardised, instantly verifiable, and secure from manipulation.
• Cleaning up foreign real estate ownership: Standardising ownership data on foreign companies and trusts buying property is essential to combat money laundering. When property registries talk to corporate registries using the same open language, hiding illicit wealth in European bricks and mortar becomes monumentally harder.

Why open standards trump alignment

Right now, the EU is making strides to align beneficial ownership data formats. But alignment without a strict, shared, open data standard is a half-measure. It leaves member states to build bespoke, translation-heavy systems that are expensive to maintain and prone to friction.

By adopting a proven open standard like BODS, the EU aligns perfectly with its own technological sovereignty mandates.

Current debates often focus on hardware, cloud infrastructure and AI. These investments are important. But sovereignty also depends on the standards that allow information to move seamlessly between systems.

If the EU wants digital infrastructure that is open, interoperable and genuinely European, beneficial ownership information should be part of that conversation.

Adopting an open standard such as BODS would be a practical step towards achieving multiple policy goals at once: stronger digital sovereignty, more competitive European technology markets, better public procurement and more effective cross-border transparency.

For four years, I was the product owner of the Beneficial Ownership Data Standard, the world’s leading open standard for beneficial ownership information and continue to advocate to improve beneficial ownership data quality and standardisation. To learn more or if you need technical guidance or consultancy support, contact me via beneficialownership.co.uk.