EU-wide Advantages and Opportunities for the call “Evolution of culture in a virtualising world” (HORIZON-CL2-2025-01-HERITAGE-05)

1. Single Market Access – 450 + Million Cultural Consumers

• Pan-European test-bed: Pilot immersive cultural experiences simultaneously in 27 Member States and associated countries, gathering large, multilingual user datasets that would be impossible to obtain at national scale.

• Demand aggregation: A unified market for creative XR tools, avatars, digital artefacts and cultural services lowers customer-acquisition costs and enables viable freemium or subscription models.

• Cross-sector spill-overs: Link virtual-world R&I with tourism, education, health, gaming and manufacturing value chains that already operate EU-wide, accelerating commercial uptake.

2. Cross-Border Collaboration & Knowledge Exchange

• Mandatory consortium structure (3+ countries) facilitates multidisciplinary teams combining SSH, ICT, ethics and business expertise spread across Europe’s regional clusters (e.g. VRT cluster Flanders, XR4Europe network, Nordic game studios).

• Living-labs in diverse cultural contexts (rural, minority language regions, metropolitan hubs) allow comparative research on cultural evolution in virtual environments, increasing validity and representativeness of results.

• Mutual recognition of skills & credits (ECTS, micro-credentials) eases researcher and student mobility, powering joint PhDs and training offers on metaverse design, digital heritage and ethics.

3. Alignment with Core EU Strategies

• Digital Decade & Web 4.0 Communication (COM 2023 442): project outputs feed directly into the upcoming European Partnership on Virtual Worlds.

• Green Deal & New European Bauhaus: promote sustainable, low-carbon XR infrastructures and aesthetic principles that celebrate European cultural diversity.

• European Democracy, Values & Rights Agenda: safeguard plurality, media freedom, multilingualism and protection from disinformation inside virtual spaces.

• Skills Agenda & Digital Education Action Plan: evidence generated can be channelled into EU-wide curricula for cultural and creative industries (CCI) and STEM.

4. Regulatory Harmonisation – A Predictable Framework

• GDPR & ePrivacy: common data-protection baseline simplifies cross-border user studies and ethical approvals.

• AI Act, Digital Services Act & eIDAS 2.0: unified rules on avatars’ digital identity, content moderation and algorithmic transparency reduce legal uncertainty and support trust-by-design virtual worlds.

• Copyright & DSM Directive: harmonised IPR regime enables transnational licensing of digital heritage assets and user-generated content, unlocking new monetisation models.

5. Access to Europe’s Innovation Ecosystem

• Research Infrastructures & EOSC: leverage CLARIN, DARIAH, Europeana, ECCCH and HPC facilities for multilingual datasets, 3D scans and semantic enrichment.

• EIT Culture & Creativity KIC: integrate business acceleration services, venture funding and a network of 400+ partners.

• Digital Innovation Hubs & Test-Before-Invest XR Labs funded under Digital Europe provide technical sandboxes and standardised assessment protocols.

6. Funding Synergies & Blended Finance

| Instrument | Added value for applicants |

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

| Creative Europe MEDIA & CULTURE | Content co-production, narrative design, audience development grants |

| Digital Europe Programme | Data Space for Cultural Heritage, deployment of cross-border XR infrastructure |

| Erasmus+, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions | PhD networks on virtual culture, staff exchanges |

| European Regional Development Fund & Interreg | Regional roll-out of pilots, cultural tourism routes |

| InvestEU Cultural & Creative Sector Window | Scale-up finance for high-growth start-ups emerging from project |

7. Scale & Impact Potential

• EU-wide standards creation: Consortium findings can shape CEN/CENELEC or ETSI standards on interoperability, accessibility and eco-design of virtual worlds.

• Policy uptake: Evidence directly feeds Council conclusions on culture & digitalisation and informs national cultural strategies through the Open Method of Coordination.

• Social cohesion multiplier: By designing culturally inclusive avatars, minority language voice-chat and accessible interfaces, projects can reduce digital divides across Member States.

8. Unique Strategic Advantages of Operating at EU Level

1. Diversity as a Living Laboratory: Europe’s 24 official languages, 300+ regional languages and myriad heritage traditions provide unmatched variety for studying cultural evolution and stress-testing inclusivity measures.

2. Collective negotiation power: EU can influence global platform governance and standards (e.g. ISO/IEC JTC 1 SC 24) far more effectively than individual states.

3. Economies of scope in ethics & safety research: Shared Horizon ethics requirements, joint data-management plans and reciprocal Institutional Review Board recognition cut duplication and speed up experimentation.

4. Brand “Europe”: Aligning with EU values of human-centric tech, sustainability and fundamental rights differentiates European virtual worlds on the global stage, opening export markets.

9. Actionable Tips for Applicants

• Map complementarity with projects such as OPENVERSE, CHARTER, REALITIES-EU, ensuring clear value-add and avoiding overlap.

• Engage EU policy communities early (DG CNECT, DG EAC, EP CULT Committee) through policy briefs and participatory foresight workshops.

• Build a stakeholder board with members from at least 10 Member States, including CCIs, cultural heritage institutions, civil-society organisations and standardisation bodies.

• Plan open-source compliance (CC0 / OSI-approved licence) to maximise downstream uptake across Member States, in line with topic conditions.

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In sum, the call offers a uniquely European springboard: a huge, diverse single market; harmonised yet forward-looking regulation; dense innovation networks; and complementary funding streams. Leveraging these advantages can transform research on virtual cultural evolution into scalable, people-centred solutions that position Europe as the global benchmark for inclusive, value-driven virtual worlds.