EU-Wide Advantages & Opportunities for the call “HORIZON-CL4-2025-04-DATA-02”

1. Single Market Access

• Gain immediate reach to 450 + million citizens and 23 million enterprises through an interoperable cloud-edge-IoT solution that is compliant with EU-wide standards (GDPR, Data Act, upcoming AI Act).

• Possibility to pilot and commercialise results simultaneously in multiple sectors (healthcare, manufacturing, mobility, smart cities) without the need for country-by-country adaptation, thanks to harmonised technical specifications promoted by the call (minimum interoperability & portability).

• Faster time-to-market: once certified/tested in one Member State, pan-EU acceptance is facilitated under the single market for digital services.

2. Cross-Border Collaboration & Knowledge Exchange

• The RIA format obliges consortia from ≥3 Member/Associated States, creating natural pathways to integrate Europe’s top cloud, HPC and edge nodes (e.g. EuroHPC JU infrastructures, national AI supercomputers, Gaia-X nodes).

• Access to 200+ European Digital Innovation Hubs (EDIHs), Testing & Experimentation Facilities (TEFs) for AI/Robotics, and Living Labs—ideal environments to co-create use cases and speed up TRL progression.

• Opportunity to set up federated data/AI sandboxes across borders, which is impossible in purely national schemes because of data-sovereignty barriers.

3. Alignment with EU Flagship Policies

• Digital Decade 2030 targets: contributes to the goal of having 75 % of EU enterprises using AI & cloud, and >10 000 climate-neutral edge nodes deployed.

• European Green Deal & Fit-for-55: call explicitly funds energy-optimised AI workflows—projects can claim CO₂ reduction contributions, improving evaluation scores.

• Open Strategic Autonomy agenda: by restricting participation to trusted countries and pushing open HW/SW stacks, projects help reduce critical dependencies on non-EU tech giants.

4. Regulatory Harmonisation & Trust

• Use the forthcoming AI Act conformity assessment & the already operative GDPR framework to create a compliance-by-design architecture—turning regulation into a competitive advantage versus non-EU competitors.

• NIS2 & Cyber Resilience Act alignment provides a single security benchmark, lowering certification costs and fostering customer trust.

5. Pan-European Innovation Ecosystem

• Direct channel to the AI-on-Demand (AIoD) platform (>10 000 registered users) for disseminating assets, gaining user feedback, and attracting talent.

• Synergies with European Partnerships:

• AI, Data & Robotics (co-programmed—this call).

• Chips JU, KDT JU—hardware accelerators and RISC-V pilots.

• SNS JU (6G)—edge connectivity pilots.

• Collaboration with IPCEI-CIS and national Recovery & Resilience Plans to secure industrial match funding or follow-up scale-up investments.

6. Funding Synergies & Leverage

• Combine Horizon funds (up to 100 % direct costs) with:

• Digital Europe Programme (DEP) digital infrastructure deployment.

• CEF-Digital for 5G/6G corridors supporting low-latency edge.

• EIC Transition/Accelerator for post-project commercialisation.

• InvestEU & EIB venture debt for large-scale roll-out.

• Typical leverage ratio: every €1 Horizon can unlock €2-€4 in complementary EU instruments, drastically increasing project runway.

7. EU-Wide Scale, Deployability & Impact

• Federated architecture enables deployment across heterogeneous EU infrastructures (cloud-edge-HPC) while respecting data-residency—key for health, gov-tech, defence, finance.

• Interoperability guidelines stemming from the project can become de-facto standards, influencing ISO/ETSI/CENELEC work and giving partners first-mover advantage.

• Enhanced access to third-country markets via mutual-recognition clauses the EU negotiates in trade agreements; the call explicitly cites facilitation of EU access to foreign markets.

8. Strategic Recommendations for Applicants

• Build a balanced consortium:

• Tier-1 research institutes for novel AI orchestration.

• Cloud/HPC providers (EuroHPC nodes) for compute access.

• Edge device manufacturers/telecoms for 5G/6G synergies.

• Industrial end-users from at least three verticals to maximise generic applicability.

• Integrate with EU data spaces (manufacturing, mobility, health) to showcase business relevance and assure data availability.

• Incorporate Green-by-Design KPIs (PUE, Joules per training step, CO₂e per inference) to address evaluators’ sustainability criteria.

• Budget a clear AI Act conformity roadmap and plan to publish open-source components on AIoD to satisfy openness & dissemination obligations.

9. Unique Value of Operating at EU Level

1. Critical mass of data, compute and talent cannot be matched by any single Member State.

2. Regulatory certainty: one compliance exercise covers 30 + countries.

3. Access to the EU’s diplomatic & trade leverage for standardisation and market entry abroad.

4. Ecosystem density (clusters, DIHs, partnerships) accelerates innovation cycles and adoption.

Bottom Line: Competing for this RIA unlocks not just funding but a fully integrated European innovation, regulatory and market framework—dramatically increasing the probability that AI/generative-AI solutions reach industrial scale, remain trustworthy, and reinforce Europe’s technological sovereignty.