EU-Wide Advantages & Opportunities of the Call HORIZON-CL2-2025-01-TRANSFO-03

1. Single Market Access (450+ million citizens)

• Pan-EU evidence base – Comparative data from multiple Member States (MS) generates policy recommendations valid for the entire Single Market, allowing uptake by firms operating in several countries.

• Multi-sector pilots across borders – Applicants can test working-time reduction (WTR) simultaneously in different regulatory and cultural contexts, providing proofs of concept that multinationals can roll out EU-wide.

• Market creation for support services – HR-tech, digital scheduling and productivity-tracking tools adapted to 4-day weeks gain direct entry into 27 MS once validated by the project.

2. Cross-Border Collaboration & Knowledge Exchange

• Transnational consortia (min. 3 MS) let applicants pool longitudinal datasets (e.g., EU-LFS, EWCS, SHARE) and link them to firm-level data, raising statistical power.

• Benchmarking of national pilots (e.g., ES, BE, ISL) supports mutual learning and rapid transfer of best practices via EU social-dialogue structures (ETUC, BusinessEurope).

• Living Labs network – Establish at least six sector-specific labs (manufacturing, care, ICT, public admin, tourism, creative industries) across North-South-East-West to test contextual barriers.

3. Alignment with Major EU Policies

• European Pillar of Social Rights Action Plan → contributes to 78 % employment & inclusive growth goals.

• Green Deal / 2040 Climate Target Plan → WTR scenarios assess CO₂, energy-use, mobility and consumption impacts.

• Digital Decade & Digital Europe Programme → leverages AI-driven workforce planning; supports up-/re-skilling via micro-credentials.

• EU Gender Equality Strategy & Union of Equality agenda → gender-disaggregated analyses of time-use and care burdens.

• Just Transition Mechanism & Social Climate Fund → evidence for fair labour transitions in carbon-intensive regions.

4. Regulatory Harmonisation & Social-Dialogue Framework

• EU minimum standards (Working Time Directive, Work-Life Balance Directive) provide a common legal baseline, lowering transaction costs for cross-border WTR experiments.

• Results feed directly into the forthcoming Council Recommendation on Quality Traineeships and Employment and potential revision of the Working Time Directive.

5. Innovation Ecosystem & Research Infrastructures

• Access to CESSDA, ESS, SHARE, Eurofound’s datasets, plus services under the European Open Science Cloud ensures high-quality, FAIR data.

• Collaboration with European Universities Alliances, EIT Culture & Creativity, EIT Manufacturing widens disciplinary reach (SSH, engineering, data science, environmental economics).

• Opportunity to create an EU Observatory on Working-Time Innovation hosted by an ESFRI RI for long-term monitoring beyond the project.

6. Funding Synergies & Blending Instruments

• ESF+/Erasmus+ – scale pilot training modules for managers & workers on compressed working weeks.

• REPowerEU & LIFE Clean Energy Transition – integrate energy-saving impacts of off-peak building use.

• Interreg Europe 2028 – replicate territorial policy labs, especially in border regions sharing labour pools.

• InvestEU Social Window – de-risk private investment in WTR-enabling technologies (automation, collaboration platforms).

7. Scale & Impact Potential

• EU-wide replicability – common evidence base accelerates adoption in national recovery & resilience plans (RRF) and collective-bargaining rounds.

• Standardised KPIs (productivity per hour, WELLBY scores, tCO₂ saved) enable scoreboard comparisons across MS, spurring a ‘race to the top’.

• Inclusive labour-market impact – activation of under-represented groups (women 55+, persons with disabilities, peripheral regions) supports cohesion policy aims.

8. Strategic Recommendations for Applicants

1. Cover ≥ 8 MS, incl. at least one cohesion-fund country & one Nordic/Baltic frontrunner to maximise policy relevance and access diverse labour-regulation regimes.

2. Assess at least two axes (economic + social or environmental) with harmonised methodologies; embed a gender & inclusion lens throughout.

3. Integrate Social Partners as core beneficiaries (not only advisory) to boost exploitation and influence EU-level negotiations.

4. Submit a FAIR data-management plan aligned with EOSC & CESSDA controlled vocabularies; reserve budget for long-term curation.

5. Draft a scaling roadmap mapping results to ESF+, Just Transition, InvestEU and national recovery funds; include exploitation-ready policy briefs per MS.

6. Plan blended dissemination: academic outputs, policy toolkits, SME-friendly guides, and a multi-lingual MOOC on WTR implementation.

9. Unique EU-Level Value Proposition

By operating at EU scale, consortia can:

• Generate the first harmonised, multi-country causal evidence on 4-day weeks, impossible to obtain within a single national sample.

• Influence both EU and national law simultaneously, leveraging Brussels policy windows (e.g., EPSCO Council) while providing MS-level pilot data.

• Unlock network effects in adoption: once multinational employers validate efficiency in several subsidiaries, uptake spreads through supply chains across the Single Market.

• Support EU’s global normative power, positioning the Union as the reference model for fair and sustainable future-of-work standards.