EU-wide Advantages & Opportunities of the Call “Preparing the EU for future enlargement: challenges and opportunities” (HORIZON-CL2-2025-01-DEMOCRACY-03)

1. Single Market Access – Leveraging a 450-million-citizen arena

• Direct pathway to policy impact: Research outputs that increase public understanding of enlargement directly influence the institutional design of a Single Market that may soon grow to 520+ million citizens (when candidate countries join).

• Economic opportunity mapping: Consortia can quantify how harmonised rules on free movement of goods, services, capital and labour will enlarge market opportunities for SMEs, academia–industry spin-offs and civil society organisations in both current and future Member States.

• Pilots in four Member States: Demonstrating tools in diverse economies (e.g. DE, IT, PL, PT) provides evidence of scalability across the entire market and readies solutions for rapid commercial or public-service roll-out.

2. Cross-Border Collaboration & Knowledge Exchange

• Mandatory inclusion of at least one beneficiary from the Western Balkans, Türkiye, Georgia, Moldova or Ukraine creates an automatic trans-European partnership, accelerating mutual learning on democratic reforms.

• Access to European Research Infrastructures (CESSDA, ESS, SHARE) delivers FAIR datasets covering 30+ countries, enabling robust comparative analysis that no single national project could achieve.

• Clustering duty with earlier Horizon 2020/Europe projects (e.g. DEMOS, ENGAGE, PERISCOPE) turns past investment into living networks, shortening time to results.

3. Alignment with EU Flagship Policies

• EU Green Deal: Enlargement will extend environmental acquis; proposals can test citizen-engagement tools on climate legislation roll-out in candidate countries.

• Digital Europe & European Digital Decade: Use of AI, social media listening and digital twins for foresight satisfies Digital Europe objectives while modernising democratic processes.

• Strategic Foresight Agenda: Scenario planning components directly feed into the Commission’s annual Strategic Foresight Reports.

• EU Values & Rule of Law Mechanism: Research addresses rule-of-law benchmarks that are pre-conditions for accession, strengthening EU constitutional identity.

4. Regulatory Harmonisation Benefits

• By comparing transition clauses (e.g. freedom of movement, real-estate acquisition) from all enlargement rounds, projects produce ready-to-use guidance for future harmonisation, reducing legal uncertainty for businesses and administrations EU-wide.

• Harmonised civic-tech tools piloted under the grant can be adopted by Commission DGs, candidate-country ministries and Member-State agencies without the need for national re-certification, thanks to EU procurement standards.

5. Access to Europe’s Innovation Ecosystem

• Synergies with EIT-KICs (Digital, Culture & Creativity) allow fast prototyping of participatory platforms and open-data dashboards.

• Talent circulation opportunities through Erasmus+, Marie-Skłodowska-Curie Actions and European Solidarity Corps create mobility pipelines for young researchers from candidate regions into EU labs and vice-versa.

• Living Labs across at least four Member States qualify projects to join the European Network of Living Labs (ENoLL), enhancing validation and exploitation potential.

6. Funding Synergies & Leverage

• Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance (IPA III): findings can inform IPA governance reforms, increasing uptake and opening follow-up contracts with DG NEAR.

• CERV, Interreg NEXT, ESF+: validated communication tools can be financed for mass deployment via these programmes after project end.

• Digital Europe Programme: AI-based engagement platforms piloted here can seek DEP support for cybersecurity hardening and scale-up.

• Technical Support Instrument (TSI): Member States can request TSI help to implement policy recommendations derived from the project, ensuring long-term impact.

7. Scale & Impact Potential

• EU-wide replicability by design: FAIR data, open-source code and multi-lingual interfaces enable immediate adoption in all 24 EU official languages plus those of candidate states.

• Policy mainstreaming: Outputs feed into Enlargement Packages, the Rule of Law Report and Council conclusions, guaranteeing visibility at the highest political level.

• Societal penetration: Digital engagement pilots can reach >10 million citizens EU-wide through coordinated social-media campaigns, drastically improving the evidence base on public perceptions.

8. Strategic Added Value vs. National-Level Projects

1. Economies of scale: Centralised creation of tools/datasets avoids 27+ fragmented national investments.

2. Geopolitical relevance: Only an EU-branded project can credibly convene stakeholders from Member States *and

• all candidate countries on equal footing.

3. Regulatory sandboxing: The project can act as a pan-European testbed for participatory AI methods, informing upcoming EU AI Act implementation guidelines—something unattainable in a single jurisdiction.

4. Credibility & neutrality: EU funding confers perceived impartiality when tackling sensitive topics like rule-of-law deficiencies, facilitating frank dialogue that national funding might compromise.

9. Actionable Opportunities for Applicants

• Form a consortium of 8–12 partners mixing academia (SSH + data science), civil-society organisations experienced in citizen engagement, tech SMEs, and at least one ministry/agency from four pilot Member States.

• Integrate a pan-European Youth Advisory Board (16–25 years) to meet the call’s emphasis on youth participation and bolster impact scoring.

• Bundle a data-donation campaign (inspired by EU Data Act principles) to crowd-source anonymised sentiment data, boosting AI model accuracy.

• Plan a post-grant exploitation package mapping which policy recommendations can enter the 2027–2030 Multi-Annual Financial Framework negotiations—demonstrating long-range EU impact.

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Delivering on this call at EU scale therefore unlocks unparalleled advantages: richer evidence, broader legitimacy, faster policy uptake and cross-programme funding leverage—benefits that no isolated national project can match.