EU-Wide Advantages & Opportunities – HORIZON-CL2-2025-01-DEMOCRACY-07

1. Direct Reach Into the EU Single Market

• Access to a community of 450 + million citizens allows pan-European piloting of early-warning tools, digital dashboards and media-literacy curricula in multiple linguistic and socio-political contexts.

• EU-level datasets (Eurobarometer, ESS, CESSDA, JRC data hubs) can be mined without additional licensing, accelerating comparative analyses on autocratic attitudes across Member States.

• Market validation in diverse democracies (Nordic consensus systems, Mediterranean polarised arenas, CEE transition states) de-risks later commercial or policy uptake in other OECD and neighbourhood countries.

2. Structured Cross-Border Collaboration

• The minimum three-country consortium rule encourages balanced participation from Western, Central-Eastern and Southern Europe—essential for studying varied autocratisation pathways.

• Horizon “lump-sum” modality removes national cost-eligibility disparities, enabling smaller CSOs, investigative media outlets and arts organisations from lower-GDP regions to join on equal footing.

• Built-in incentives for clustering with earlier Horizon projects (e.g., DEMOCRACY-01-05, SU-GOVERNANCE-09-2020) open ready-made knowledge-exchange networks and joint policy-labs.

3. Full Alignment With Flagship EU Strategies

• Digital Europe: research on disinformation, algorithmic bias and surveillance tech dovetails with DEP investments in trustworthy AI and the European Digital Identity framework.

• European Democracy Action Plan (EDAP): project outputs (risk indicators, media-literacy toolkits) can feed directly into EDAP’s planned European Media Freedom Act roll-out.

• EU Gender Equality Strategy & LGBTIQ Equality Strategy: focus on gender-washing and minority scapegoating supports implementation monitoring across Member States.

• Global Gateway & Neighbourhood Policy: evidence on engagement with external autocracies informs EU foreign policy conditionality mechanisms.

4. Regulatory Harmonisation & Open Science Infrastructure

• GDPR-aligned protocols simplify sensitive survey & digital-trace data collection across 27 jurisdictions under one legal framework.

• Mandatory FAIR data obligations channel outputs into EOSC, multiplying visibility and secondary-use citations and increasing societal impact scores.

• Common ethical standards (EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, ALLEA code) streamline multi-site experiments on polarisation and resistance tactics.

5. Access to the Pan-European Innovation Ecosystem

• Direct linkages to ESFRI social-science infrastructures (ESS-ERIC, CESSDA, EHRI) provide high-quality longitudinal datasets and advanced training services.

• Collaboration with EIT Culture & Creativity KIC (launched 2024) can fast-track creative-arts interventions against autocratic narratives into market-oriented ventures.

• Synergies with COST Actions on populism or disinformation broaden researcher mobility and short-term scientific missions.

6. Multilevel Funding Synergies

• CERV & Erasmus+ can fund grass-roots civic-education pilots derived from the project, boosting dissemination KPIs.

• Digital Europe Programme can finance scale-up of AI-based early-warning platforms validated within the RIA.

• Technical Support Instrument offers Member-State public administrations bespoke uptake services for reforms identified by the consortium.

• INTERREG and ESF+ can co-finance regional replication of successful resistance strategies in border areas vulnerable to FIMI (Foreign Information Manipulation & Interference).

7. Scaling & Impact at EU Level

• Harmonised indicators allow the Commission to integrate results into the Rule-of-Law Report scoreboard and the European Semester, giving findings direct policy leverage.

• The consortium can propose a European Autocratisation Risk Barometer hosted by the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), ensuring long-term institutional anchoring.

• Outputs can inform EU Council Presidency conclusions or European Parliament resolutions, amplifying impact beyond academic circles.

8. Unique EU Added Value vs. National-Only Projects

| Dimension | EU Scale Benefit |

|-----------|-----------------|

| Comparative Evidence | Robust cross-country counter-factuals to identify universal vs. context-specific drivers of autocracy |

| Policy Uptake | Direct channels to Commission DGs, Council WG on Democracy, and EP committees |

| Critical Mass | Aggregated sample sizes for behavioural experiments, enhancing statistical power |

| Risk Mitigation | Diversified partnership spreads political/societal risk when researching sensitive topics |

9. Actionable Next Steps for Applicants

1. Map complementary Horizon and CERV projects for mandatory clustering; pre-negotiate MoUs.

2. Engage at least one EU agency (e.g., FRA, EU-LISA) as associate partner to accelerate policy pathways.

3. Align data-management plan with EOSC and obtain letters of support from CESSDA/ESS to showcase infrastructure commitments.

4. Pre-identify synergies with Digital Europe consortia working on trustworthy AI to future-proof technological components.

5. Draft an exploitation plan that positions the project as an evidence provider to the upcoming 2027 Rule-of-Law Review Cycle.

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Leveraging these EU-wide advantages markedly enhances proposal excellence, impact and implementation scores, maximising both scientific and societal returns while reinforcing the Union’s strategic objective of safeguarding democracy.