Exploring and improving access to housing in rural areas and developing the houses and villages of the future
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See in 5 min if you're eligible for Exploring and improving access to housing in rural areas and developing the houses and villages of the future offering max €50.0M funding💰 Funding Details
Funding Overview
Key Facts
- Call Identifier: HORIZON-CL6-2025-02-COMMUNITIES-02
- Type of Action: *HORIZON-RIA* (Research & Innovation Action) – Lump-Sum model
- Destination: *Resilient, inclusive, healthy and green rural, coastal and urban communities*
- Opening Date: 06 May 2025
- Deadline: 16 September 2025 – 17:00 Brussels time
- Maximum EU Contribution per Project (indicative): €50 million
- TRL Target: Typically TRL 2-5 (research to early prototyping)
Expected Outcomes
1. Data-driven insight into rural real-estate & rental markets and their social impacts.
2. Actionable strategies that widen access to affordable, quality and social housing in rural areas.
3. Replicable, climate-smart blueprints for nearly-zero-emission houses and whole villages of the future.
Mandatory Scope Elements
- Comprehensive quantitative & qualitative market analysis (short- & long-term rentals).
- Creation or enrichment of open datasets on rural building stock, incl. abandoned assets.
- Assessment of affordability & social equity (gender, age, ethnicity, disability).
- Policy recommendations on regulation, finance & market incentives.
- Participatory co-design of future housing/village concepts, integrating NEB principles, circularity and climate adaptation/mitigation.
- Multi-Actor Approach (MAA): farmers, SMEs, municipalities, citizens, financiers, architects, NGOs and SSH experts must all co-create.
> Tip: Link your proposal to deliverables of the EU Rural Observatory and cite relevant Horizon Europe & NEB projects to show continuity.
📊 At a Glance
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🇪🇺 Strategic Advantages
EU-Wide Advantages & Opportunities for ‘Exploring and improving access to housing in rural areas and developing the houses and villages of the future’ (HORIZON-CL6-2025-02-COMMUNITIES-02)
1. Single Market Access – Leveraging 450 + Million Consumers
• Pan-European demand for sustainable rural living solutions – rising tele-work and lifestyle migration trends create an EU-wide customer base for affordable, nearly-zero-emission rural housing modules, renovation kits and digital real-estate services.
• First-mover standard-setting – results can feed into emerging CEN/CENELEC standards on bio-based materials, modular retrofitting and smart-village ICT, giving beneficiaries an early competitive edge across the entire Internal Market.
• Economies of scale – aggregated procurement of eco-materials (e.g. timber, hemp insulation, heat-pump components) lowers unit costs and speeds up adoption in regions from the Baltic to the Mediterranean.
2. Cross-Border Collaboration & Knowledge Exchange
• Mandatory multi-actor consortia unlock cooperation between northern depopulating areas, western tourist-pressured regions and eastern low-income villages, ensuring solutions are stress-tested under diverse socio-economic contexts.
• Living Labs network – establish 6–8 transnational Rural Housing Living Labs aligned with the New European Bauhaus to co-design, prototype and showcase replicable ‘house & village of the future’ models.
• Mutual recognition of construction skills & qualifications under EU Directive 2005/36/EC facilitates labour mobility for retrofitting projects, speeding deployment.
3. Alignment with Flagship EU Policies
• European Green Deal & Fit-for-55 – nearly zero-GHG housing directly contributes to the 2030 climate target, while circular use of local bio-materials advances the Circular Economy Action Plan.
• Long-Term Vision for Rural Areas (LTVRA) – the call is explicitly listed as an R&I flagship. Grant winners can shape upcoming Rural Pact actions, influencing policy beyond project life.
• European Pillar of Social Rights – affordable rural housing addresses Principle 19 (housing & assistance for the homeless) and Principle 20 (access to essential services).
• Digital Decade & Gigabit Society – integration of smart-village connectivity, digital twins and open cadastral data sets reinforces EU digital targets.
4. EU-Level Regulatory Harmonisation Advantages
• Uniform implementation of Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (recast) enables common KPI framework (kWh/m², EPC ratings) and smooth scaling of innovations across member states.
• EU taxonomy for sustainable activities – research outputs can be aligned early, giving investors green-finance certainty and accelerating commercial uptake.
• General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) creates a predictable framework for sharing real-estate and socio-economic micro-data among partners.
5. Access to Europe’s Innovation Ecosystem
• Partnership opportunities with (e.g.) Joint Research Centre (rural observatory), European Social Survey (ESS-ERIC), EIT Climate-KIC ‘Deep Demonstrations’, EIT Digital smart-villages initiative, and 29 European University Alliances specialising in sustainability & architecture.
• Utilisation of world-class research infrastructures: CLARIN (SSH text mining for housing narratives), EuroHPC JU (digital twins), ESFRI ENV RI (climate data for resilient design).
6. Funding Synergies & Blended Finance Pathways
• European Regional Development Fund / Interreg – replicate prototypes via cross-border regional programmes (e.g. Atlantic, Alpine, Danube).
• Common Agricultural Policy – LEADER & CAP Strategic Plans – finance community-led village renovations that stem from project blueprints.
• LIFE Clean Energy Transition – upscale deep-renovation technologies validated by the project.
• InvestEU Social Investment & Skills Window – attract private capital into rural co-housing or social-housing schemes designed under the action.
• Recovery & Resilience Facility (RRF) – Member States’ NRRP housing components can fast-track pilot roll-outs.
7. Scale & Impact Potentials
• EU-wide deployment roadmap – package policy recommendations, technical guides, and open-source design libraries under Creative Commons for any municipality.
• Replication potential quantified: 117 M rural inhabitants, 21 M vacant/under-used units (Eurostat 2023) – even a 1 % uptake yields 210 000 units renovated or reused.
• Social impact – reduced energy poverty; gender-sensitive co-housing models; inclusive design for ageing rural populations.
8. Strategic Value of Operating at EU Level
• Critical mass for data analytics – pooling cadastral, satellite and socio-economic micro-data across 27 MS enables machine-learning models impossible at national scale, enhancing accuracy of vacancy, affordability and gentrification forecasts.
• Policy influence loop – project consortium can feed real-time evidence into EU fora (Rural Pact platform, CoR, EP Intergroup on Rural, Mountainous & Remote areas), shaping future legislation.
• Risk diversification – geopolitical, climatic and market risks spread across multiple regions bolster project resilience and investor confidence.
• Cultural diversity as an innovation driver – integrating Mediterranean bioclimatic design, Nordic timber engineering and Central-European social-housing traditions fosters unique, exportable solutions.
9. Actionable EU-Wide Opportunities
1. Establish an EU Rural Housing Data Space compliant with the Common European Data Spaces initiative, enabling open APIs for researchers and SMEs.
2. Launch a Pan-European ‘Renovate the Village’ Challenge Fund (crowd-in ERDF & venture philanthropy) to test business models in at least 10 Member States.
3. Propose an EU Green Bauhaus Label for Rural Housing, developed with CEN, to certify low-carbon, circular, and culturally sensitive designs.
4. Pilot Cross-border revolving loan funds (using InvestEU guarantees) targeting young families and social-economy actors relocating to revitalised villages.
5. Create a Knowledge & Skills Passport recognised through the European Skills Agenda to upscale local craftsmen and digital-construction workers.
10. Conclusion – Unique EU Selling Proposition
By operating at the EU scale, consortia can simultaneously:
• unlock unparalleled datasets and research breadth;
• influence continent-wide policy and standards;
• combine diverse climatic, cultural and socio-economic conditions to stress-test and perfect solutions;
• leverage a mosaic of funding instruments for rapid replication.
The grant therefore offers a strategic springboard to turn innovative rural-housing concepts into an integrated, EU-wide transformation pathway that is socially fair, climate-neutral and economically scalable.
🏷️ Keywords
Ready to Apply?
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