EU-Wide Advantages and Opportunities for HORIZON-CL6-2025-02-COMMUNITIES-04

1. Single Market Access (450+ million consumers)

• Pan-European testbed for sustainable diets. Living labs in at least three Member States can validate behavioural nudges, community garden models and urban agriculture technologies under a common set of food-safety, labelling and public-health rules, accelerating readiness for EU-wide commercial roll-out.

• Short food-supply chains at scale. Results can plug directly into the EU Organic, GI and Farm-to-Fork market frameworks, enabling SMEs and social-economy actors to place climate-friendly urban produce on shelves from Lisbon to Ljubljana without country-specific re-certification.

• Public procurement leverage. The project can influence the €200 billion/year EU public-canteen market by co-creating procurement guidelines that are automatically valid in all Member States through the Single Market’s public-procurement directives.

2. Cross-Border Collaboration & Knowledge Exchange

• Mandatory multi-actor, multi-country consortia. Partners gain structured access to municipal authorities, CSOs and SMEs in widening countries—boosting excellence and helping them meet the proposal’s strong call for inclusion of such entities.

• Network effects with existing EU R&I assets. Rapid synergies with CLEVERFOOD CSA, Horizon 2020 projects (e.g., FOODSHIFT 2030, TOMORROW), and living-lab infrastructures in the Urban Community of Practice.

• Talent circulation. Staff exchanges and joint PhD supervision via Marie Skłodowska-Curie, COST Actions and EIT Food programmes strengthen inter-regional human-capital pipelines.

3. Alignment with Flagship EU Policies

• European Green Deal & Farm-to-Fork. Direct contribution to the 2030 pesticide, fertiliser and food-waste reduction targets through urban agro-ecological pilots.

• EU Climate Law. Measurable GHG savings from shortened supply chains feed into Member State National Energy & Climate Plans (NECPs).

• Food 2030 & Sustainable Food Systems Partnership (SFS). The topic is explicitly linked, positioning consortia to shape the forthcoming SFS Strategic Research & Innovation Agenda and influence €2 billion of co-funded calls.

• New European Bauhaus (NEB). Community gardens and co-creation spaces can act as NEB demonstrators, unlocking design and culture funds while boosting proposal evaluation under “impact” and “implementation”.

4. Regulatory Harmonisation Benefits

• Unified food-safety and novel-food authorisations. RCTs on alternative proteins or vertical-farm produce benefit from EFSA procedures that cover all EU markets.

• GDPR & European Health Data Space. Pan-EU data-monitoring (AI/ML) can legally pool anonymised consumption and health data, giving statistical power unattainable in a single country.

• Social-economy statute & Public Procurement Directive 2014/24/EU. Facilitates cross-border replication of social-enterprise business models piloted in the project.

5. Access to Europe’s Innovation Ecosystem

• World-class RTOs & universities. Automatic eligibility of Fraunhofer, Wageningen UR, CSIC, INRAE, etc., provides cutting-edge agrifood science and SSH expertise demanded by the call.

• European Digital Innovation Hubs (EDIHs). Offer free services (sandboxing, AI, cybersecurity) to living labs, reducing project costs and de-risking digital pilots.

• EIT Food & EIC Transition. Post-project commercialisation pipelines for start-ups generated in co-creation spaces.

6. Funding Synergies & Leverage

• Cohesion Policy 2021-2027 (€392 billion). Urban authorities in the consortium can pre-agree ERDF/ESF+ ring-fencing to scale successful pilots after the Horizon grant ends.

• LIFE & Interreg. Complementary financing for nature-based solutions (community gardens, green roofs) and cross-border city clusters.

• CAP Eco-Schemes & LEADER. Farmers engaged in peri-urban supply chains can obtain additional income streams through CAP payments that are harmonised EU-wide.

7. Scale and Impact Potential

• Replicability KPI built in. Horizon evaluators favour proposals promising uptake in ≥10 EU cities; regulatory and market uniformity makes this realistic within 3–5 years.

• Citizen reach. By integrating social-media campaigns across linguistic regions, behaviour-change interventions can influence >50 million citizens, delivering EU-level impact metrics attractive to DG RTD and DG SANTE.

• Policy mainstreaming. Results feed directly into the upcoming Mandatory Sustainability Labelling initiative and the Urban Policy Framework 2028+, magnifying influence beyond the project’s lifespan.

8. Unique Strategic Value of Operating at EU Level

• Critical mass for systemic change. No single Member State can by itself demonstrate the diversity of dietary cultures, governance models and socio-economic contexts needed to validate truly systemic food-system transformation.

• Evaluation advantage. Proposals that concretely exploit EU-level instruments score higher under “excellence” (pan-European knowledge base) and “impact” (EU policy relevance).

• First-mover positioning for consortia. Success in this topic will place beneficiaries at the centre of the forthcoming €400 million European Partnership on Sustainable Food Systems (2025-2031), opening sustained EU revenue streams.

9. Actionable Opportunities for Applicants

1. Build a triad consortium structure: (a) Leading research institutions in at least three Member States; (b) Municipalities from widening countries; (c) Social-economy SMEs/start-ups for rapid market entry.

2. Reserve ≥10 % budget for alignment tasks with CLEVERFOOD, SFS Partnership, NEB demonstrators, ensuring compliance with call text and boosting synergy scores.

3. Pre-sign MoUs with ERDF Managing Authorities to lock in post-grant scaling, a strong plus under lump-sum risk evaluation.

4. Use the European Cluster Collaboration Platform to recruit existing living labs and avoid duplication—meeting the call’s requirement to connect with previous EU projects.

5. Embed a GDPR-compliant data-trust leveraging the European Health Data Space to future-proof AI monitoring components.

Bottom line: Acting at EU scale multiplies market reach, policy influence, scientific excellence and follow-up financing—advantages that cannot be matched by national-level initiatives and that directly address the Horizon Europe evaluators’ criteria of excellence, impact and quality of implementation.