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OPEN

Exploring and improving access to housing in rural areas and developing the houses and villages of the future

Last Updated: 8/4/2025Deadline: 15 September 2025€50.0M Available

Quick Facts

Programme:Horizon Europe
Call ID:HORIZON-CL6-2025-02-COMMUNITIES-02
Deadline:15 September 2025
Max funding:€50.0M
Status:
open
Time left:2 months

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💰 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.

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📊 At a Glance

€50.0M
Max funding
15 September 2025
Deadline
2 months
Time remaining
Eligible Countries
EU Member States, Associated Countries

🇪🇺 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.


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