EU-Wide Advantages & Opportunities – HORIZON-CL5-2026-01-D6-04

1. Single Market Access

• 450+ million consumers & 27 Member States: Validation methods that embed realistic human driving behaviour become an EU-wide de-facto yard-stick for CCAM certification, unlocking immediate market entry for industrial partners in every national market.

• Pan-European fleet deployment pilots: Harmonised validation criteria allow OEMs, Tier-1 suppliers and mobility operators to roll out CCAM functions simultaneously in Helsinki, Barcelona or Warsaw without re-engineering for local rule sets.

• Accelerated time-to-market: Acceptance by EU type-approval authorities (DG-GROW, UNECE WP.29) provides a single ‘passport’ versus 27 parallel approvals, reducing cost and speeding commercialisation by ~30-40 %.

2. Cross-Border Collaboration & Knowledge Exchange

• Mandatory multi-national consortia: Horizon projects typically gather 8-20 beneficiaries from ≥8 countries, ensuring access to diverse driver data, road typologies and cultural behaviour patterns (Nordic risk-averse vs. Southern assertive styles).

• Living Labs along TEN-T corridors: Seamless data collection in real cross-border traffic (e.g., Rotterdam-Duisburg logistics route) enriches model calibration and showcases interoperability.

• SSH Integration: Cooperation with European sociologists, behavioural economists and ethicists supports culturally sensitive modelling and wider public acceptance.

3. Alignment with Flagship EU Policies

• European Green Deal: Safer, more acceptable CCAM accelerates modal shift to shared autonomous vehicles, cutting urban CO₂ and NOx.

• Sustainable & Smart Mobility Strategy (SSMS): Contributes directly to Flagship 5 ‘Automated Mobility’ milestones for 2030/2050.

• Digital Europe & Data Spaces: Outputs feed the upcoming Federated CCAM Data Space, reinforcing Europe’s push for sovereign mobility data infrastructure under the Data Act.

• AI Act readiness: By embedding ‘human-in-the-loop’ safety assurance, the project anticipates upcoming AI high-risk system conformity assessments.

4. Regulatory Harmonisation & Standardisation

• EU-CEM for CCAM: Using the common evaluation methodology enables immediate comparability of safety claims across Member States.

• Contribution to CEN/ISO & UNECE: Results can feed WG-29 GRVA work on ADS safety, influencing global norms while reflecting European values.

• Type-approval pass criteria: Human-behaviour models will inform Annexes of the future EU General Safety Regulation delegated acts, creating first-mover advantage for consortium members.

5. Embedded in Europe’s Innovation Ecosystem

• Access to >40 CCAM Partnership projects: Immediate synergies with i4Driving, BERTHA, HEADSTART, SUNRISE, SYNERGIES, Scenario Generation 2023, etc.

• World-class research infrastructure: Use of EU JRC proving grounds, Pan-European Naturalistic Driving study databases, EIT Urban Mobility living labs, and high-performance computing centres (EuroHPC).

• Talent pool: Mobility of researchers under MSCA and Erasmus+ exchanges facilitates rapid up-skilling in AI, behavioural science and safety engineering.

6. Funding Synergies

• Cascade funding: Potential to allocate FSTP vouchers to SMEs generating niche behavioural models or sensor technologies.

• Complementarity with CEF-Transport & Digital: Infrastructure pilots (e.g., sensorised corridors) can be co-funded, lowering CAPEX burden.

• EIB/InvestEU leverage: Validated safety models derisk later-stage deployment investments, unlocking blended finance for large-scale CCAM fleets.

• Regional funds (ERDF/Just Transition): Cohesion regions can co-finance local test sites, widening geographic impact.

7. Scale & Impact Potential

• EU-wide deployment blueprint: Once TRL-5 models are accepted, they can be industrialised to TRL-7/8 under future IA calls, enabling full-scale automated freight corridors and urban robo-taxis.

• Safety & societal benefits: Up to 30 % accident reduction by addressing mixed-traffic interaction; economic savings estimated at €34 bn/year across the EU.

• Industrial leadership: Positions EU OEMs and suppliers ahead of US/Asian rivals by offering ‘human-centric’ automation certified for diverse European contexts.

8. Strategic Differentiators of Acting at EU Level

1. Behavioural Diversity Capture: Only an EU consortium can legally and logistically pool datasets from Mediterranean, Central, Nordic and Eastern regions, ensuring statistical robustness.

2. Critical Mass for Standards Lobbying: United European voice is more influential in ISO/SAE than fragmented national efforts.

3. Cost Efficiency: Shared lump-sum budget and common tools avoid duplication of national R&D (estimated 20-25 % savings).

4. Digital Sovereignty: EU governance model prevents lock-in to non-EU cloud or proprietary black-box behavioural libraries.

9. Actionable Recommendations to Maximise EU Advantage

• Build a tri-cluster consortium combining (a) behavioural science & SSH, (b) automotive/AI tech, (c) certification & standards bodies.

• Include at least 10 Member States covering North-South-East-West driving cultures; recruit associated partners from US & Japan for comparative analysis.

• Integrate with the CCAM Data Space from day-1; ensure FAIR data & IP terms compliant with the Data Governance Act.

• Plan standardisation work packages with CEN-CENELEC/ETSI liaisons; budget for participation in UNECE GRVA sessions.

• Leverage CEF call synergies to co-deploy cross-border pilot corridors for real-world validation under mixed traffic.

• Prepare scalability pathway: draft business models and InvestEU pitch decks during the last project year.