Alternatives to Supporting sustainable and smart urban mobility in Europe (CIVITAS)

Expected Outcome: Successful proposals will contribute to the Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability and Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation, the Chemical Industry Action Plan, the Clean Industrial Deal as well as the Horizon Europe Mission "Restore our Ocean and Waters by 2030" in particular to Objective 2: "Prevent and eliminate pollution of our oceans, Seas and waters". Projects results are expected to contribute to the following expected outcomes: Full industrial scale biorefinery and related value chain(s) to produce SSbD bio-based solutions for home and/or personal care sector with significantly improved sustainability. Wider availability of bio-based products in home and/or personal care sector meeting both regulatory standards and technical performance requirements. Increased consumer/end user acceptance of bio-based solutions, facilitating market uptake. Contribution to the EU strategic autonomy, resilience and competitiveness, reducing the fossil feedstock dependence for chemicals production and minimising biomass imports dependencies. Scope: The home and personal care sector, including fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) and cosmetics, is a key industry where…

Expected Outcome: Project results are expected to contribute to all the following expected outcomes: Advanced tools and solutions are developed and demonstrated to enhance the competitiveness of European multimodal freight transport networks, ensuring sustainability, resilience, security and increased freight transport capacity; Solutions provide real-time visibility, tracking and predictive analytics for multimodal services, performance, and network status (e.g., disruptions, maintenance) to support better planning and increase shippers' adoption of multimodal transport; Strengthened integration of multimodal (e.g. rail, inland waterway transport and short sea shipping) data, along with improved synchromodal solutions, enabling more agile, flexible, responsive and resilient multimodal transport logistic systems. Scope: Freight transport demand in Europe is expected to double in the coming decades, making it essential to enhance the capacity, efficiency, and resilience of freight transport to maintain the European competitiveness. Despite policy goals to strengthen multimodal transport, double rail freight’s share by 2050, and increase transport by inland waterways and short sea…

Expected Outcome: Project results are expected to contribute to some or all of the following expected outcomes: Improved detection, localization, characterization and, when applicable, neutralisation, of unmanned vehicles alone or in swarms, involved in trafficking or smuggling activities across external borders, while complying with legal and ethical guidelines; Improved border situational awareness, especially in the context of large-scale movements of people across borders, including from potential instrumentalisation of irregular migration, conflicts, social, economic, environmental and climate stress; Better safeguard and promotion of fundamental rights thanks to enhanced situational awareness; Reliable, redundant detection and reaction capacities without putting staff and society at risk. Scope: Capabilities for situational awareness and surveillance of land and sea borders need improvement, in consideration of potential future challenges that may require updated capabilities. These challenges may include potential future large-scale movements of people across external borders, resulting from future attempts to instrumentalisation of irregular migration, but also from…

Expected Outcome: Project results are expected to contribute to some or all of the following expected outcomes: Creation of an integrated ecosystem for secure and resilient communication systems to support civil security operations across Europe; Advancement of next-generation capabilities, ensuring robust, scalable, and interoperable communication systems for critical civil security functions relevant for the future EU Critical Communication System (EUCCS). Scope: The European Union Critical Communication System (EUCCS) is a flagship initiative aiming at gradual development of a unified, secure, and interoperable communication infrastructure to support critical public safety and civil security operations across Europe. Aims to provide law enforcement, first responders, emergency services, and other critical sectors with reliable, real-time communication capabilities, even in challenging or high-risk environments. This topic aims to streamline the creation of an integrated ecosystem for secure and resilient communication systems that support civil security operations across Europe. It aims to advance next-generation capabilities, ensuring robust, scalable, and interoperable…

Expected Outcome: Project results are expected to contribute to all of the following expected outcomes: An increased number of local authorities systematically identify and quantify vacant, obsolete or underutilised spaces for reuse in neighbourhoods [1] in a context-sensitive way to address local community [1] challenges and needs. Increase in renovated, renatured, or converted spaces that address local community challenges and needs. Scope: Europe’s housing needs, inefficient use of the existing building stock, environmental commitments, and the EU’s goal of “no net land take” by 2050 make a compelling case for reusing the significant number of existing spaces, including buildings and infrastructure, that are vacant, obsolete or underutilised. In Europe, there are, for instance, an estimated 19,000 km² of underutilised brownfield land and 300 km² of vacant or underutilised office space [3] . The reuse of vacant, obsolete or underutilised spaces, following circularity [1] and sufficiency principles, can help address community challenges and needs thanks to their typical proximity and connection to essential infrastructure and services. While vacant, obsolete or underutilised…

Objective: The Arctic is undergoing rapid environmental and geopolitical change, with increasing impacts on its inhabitants, particularly Indigenous Peoples. As external interest in the region grows, ensuring their meaningful involvement in policymaking processes that affect them is essential.

Scope: Topic scope: Promoting an enabling civic space (CERV-2026-CHAR-LITI-CIVIC) A thriving civic space requires an enabling legal, administrative and regulatory environment in which civil society organisations (CSOs) are supported and empowered, protected from threats, and able to operate freely. This call therefore aims to reinforce the conditions for such an environment by supporting actions that strengthen both the monitoring of civic space and the protection and resilience of CSOs and human rights defenders working to uphold EU values. Monitoring of civic space Projects should establish or enhance systematic and comprehensive monitoring systems to regularly assess the environment in which CSOs operate at national level. These should build on and align as closely as possible with existing frameworks—such as the indicators developed by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights and data from international organisations—as well as national monitoring systems, to ensure comparability and consistency. Such proposals can cover in particular the following: focus on breaches of fundamental rights affecting CSOs and human rights defenders, including the right to freedom of…

Expected Outcome: Upon completion of the Action, the European HPC and AI ecosystems will be strengthened through an effective network of AI Factories supporting the adoption and use of HPC in the development of trustworthy artificial intelligence (AI) by startups and SMEs, but also by the private and public sector in general, taking into account the specific needs of the local and national ecosystems. The coordinated network will facilitate synergies and assets reutilisation, support, training, staff exchange, knowledge transfer between, AIF+As, as well as prevent duplication of efforts. The Action will ensure the network of AIF+As will be embedded in an enhanced European AI/ HPC ecosystem with strong links to other European HPC, AI, and data initiatives (see above). Moreover, the Action will result in: Contribution to the realisation of the EuroHPC overall and specific objectives. A common governance baseline across AIF+As to ensure the full interoperability and the collective compliance or the network of AIF+As. Seamless user experience across AIF+As, with users receiving a consistent offer of core services. Effective coordination and exchange of best practices and information…

Expected Impact: Projects funded under this call are expected to deliver tangible industrial outputs that demonstrably advance the readiness and affordability of future governmental Ka-band user terminals for IRIS2 and GOVSATCOM services. Expected outputs include, for example: qualified production processes, calibrated sub-assemblies, pilot-run units, validated manufacturing equipment chains or manufacturing cost models. Purely analytical deliverables (studies, design reports) are not sufficient as primary outputs but may complement the above. Where relevant, outputs shall include documented design assumptions, interface parameters or process specifications enabling adaptation to different terminal configurations with limited re-engineering, so as to support uptake in follow-on integration, pilot deployment and scale-up activities. Objective: The aim of this call for proposals is to advance the industrial readiness of European Ka-band user terminal technologies, subsystems and manufacturing processes, with a view to enabling cost-effective production of user terminals for services provided under the Union secure connectivity programme (IRIS²) and GOVSATCOM. The target reference…

Expected Outcome: The targeted outcomes reflect the above challenges and cover a comprehensive Front End module design which: Covers the FR3 range as defined by the relevant Agenda Item of WRC 27 (7 to 15 GHz range) with possible extension up to 24 GHz if required by some regional implementations, with inherent tuning capabilities to accommodate potential regional variations. Mitigates interferences with incumbent FR3 band users and maximises sharing capabilities across the band in line with the European regulatory approach on spectrum sharing. Enables integration of a large number of antenna elements beyond the State of the Art and support massive MIMO implementation with compensation of increased path loss compared to 5G FR1 implementations. Enables at least an order-of-magnitude increase in RF processing compared to 5G FR1 implementations. Enables 5G cell site reuse and minimises deployment complexity on top of 5G sites deployment. Enables low-cost and low energy implementation of the elementary constituent modules, efficient packaging and is mainly based on the integration of microelectronics heterogeneous technologies where European industry has strong expertise and…

Expected Outcome: Project results are expected to contribute to all the following expected outcomes: Advance in the achievement of the Strategic Energy Technology (SET) Plan’s research and innovation priorities and targets for wind energy; Efficient and effective support to wind energy research and innovation through alignment and cooperation among different actors, avoiding fragmentation of efforts; Energy producers and consumers benefit from increased performance of wind energy technologies with the focus on efficiency and flexibility, reduced cost, improved reliability and sustainability, operation and maintenance, safety, robustness and security during all stages of the lifetime of a wind energy farm from installation, operation and maintenance to decommissioning; Increased contribution of wind energy to the energy system, with minimal impacts on health and the environment (notably biodiversity and pollution) and at the lowest possible cost. Scope: The action contributes to address the Strategic Energy Technology (SET) Plan’s research and innovation priorities and targets for wind energy, as defined by the Implementation Working Group (IWG) on wind energy, the European…

Expected Outcome: Objectives and profile of the ERC Plus Grant Principal Investigator The ERC Plus Grant supports outstanding Principal Investigators who address a major scientific challenge. Applications for ERC Plus Grants should be for projects that could not be carried out with a regular ERC grant. Applicants should explain how the proposed project aims go beyond those of a regular ERC project, for example, because they have a vision to transform their field or open a new field of research. Scholars at all career stages can apply for an ERC Plus Grant if they have an outstanding record of scientific achievement at the forefront of their field. Their intellectual leadership will be evaluated in comparison to peers at their own career stage. It is expected that a researcher may be the Principal Investigator of only one ERC Plus Grant in their lifetime. Applicants should be aware that every year, only some 30 ERC Plus Grants can be awarded across all fields and all career stages, compared to approximately 1000 Starting, Consolidator and Advanced Grants. This level of competitiveness should be taken into account when considering whether to submit an application. Size of ERC Plus…