EU-Wide Advantages & Opportunities for HORIZON-CL6-2025-02-FARM2FORK-04-two-stage

1. Strategic Alignment with Flagship EU Policies

• European Green Deal & Farm-to-Fork Strategy – Directly tackles the legally-binding 50 % EU food-waste-reduction target proposed under the Waste Framework Directive revision, supporting climate-neutrality goals for 2050.

• Circular Economy Action Plan – Generates the harmonised data that regulators need to set eco-design, labelling and waste-prevention rules for food products across the internal market.

• Digital Europe & Data Spaces – By delivering interoperable metadata and EOSC-ready datasets, projects can feed into the upcoming ‘Common European Green Data Space’, boosting secondary data markets and AI innovation.

2. Single Market Access (450+ m Consumers)

• Unified, EU-level food-waste measurement standards lower transaction costs for tech providers, enabling one-time certification and roll-out of sensors, AI apps or smart-packing solutions in 27 Member States.

• Harmonised reporting formats increase public procurement opportunities (e.g. national statistical offices, municipal waste companies, retail chains), allowing rapid scaling without country-by-country adaptation.

3. Cross-Border Collaboration & Knowledge Exchange

• Mandatory multi-actor approach incentivises consortia to combine Nordic digital-waste-tracking pioneers, Southern European behavioural scientists and Central/Eastern municipal utilities, accelerating mutual learning.

• Access to the European Consumer Food Waste Forum, EU Platform on Food Losses & Food Waste, and EOSC gives beneficiaries ready-made dissemination channels and living labs in multiple cultural contexts.

• Citizen-science activities can be synchronised through EU-level campaigns (e.g. European Week of Waste Reduction), maximising sample size and diversity while sharing engagement methodologies.

4. Regulatory Harmonisation Benefits

• Common EU methodology for edible vs. inedible fractions will become the de-facto standard for national reporting; early movers influence the technical specifications (e.g. calibration protocols, data taxonomies).

• One harmonised dataset positions companies to comply with upcoming Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) obligations on Scope 3 food-waste emissions.

5. Access to Europe’s Innovation Ecosystem

• Cluster 6 RIA projects typically include TRL 3-6 pilots. Consortia gain privileged links to EIT Food Living Labs, Digital Innovation Hubs, and ERA-NET SUSFOOD networks, shortening the pathway to commercialisation.

• Integration with Research Infrastructures (RI)—such as AnaEE, EMPHASIS or ACTRIS—enables advanced compositional analysis of food waste streams at marginal cost.

6. Funding Synergies & Leverage

• Horizon lump-sum model reduces administrative burden and can be blended with:

• LIFE 2021-2027 Circular Economy sub-programme for demonstration scale-ups.

• Innovation Fund (IFI) for first-of-a-kind industrial deployment of smart packaging or AI-enabled household devices.

• European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) Smart Specialisation priorities on agri-food or digitalisation, facilitating regional pilots.

• Connecting Europe Facility (CEF-Digital) vouchers for cross-border data-infrastructure costs.

• Results deliver the robust evidence base needed for Member States to unlock RRF (Recovery & Resilience Facility) food-waste-reduction reforms.

7. Scale & Impact Potential

• EU-wide samples covering diverse socio-economic groups create statistically representative models that national projects cannot achieve, allowing personalised behavioural nudges with higher effect sizes.

• Pan-European datasets enable Big-Data-driven policy simulations, letting DG ENV or Eurostat forecast the effect of VAT reforms, date-labelling changes, or consumer-education campaigns.

• By embedding metadata standards into EOSC, projects ensure long-term FAIR data availability, multiplying citation and exploitation potential beyond the project lifetime.

8. Market & Business Opportunities

• Tech SMEs can prototype once and offer a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution for waste tracking to utilities and retailers across the EU, opening an addressable market valued at >€2 bn annually.

• Interoperability paves the way for green public procurement clauses that favour certified measurement tech—first movers gain a competitive moat.

• Harmonised edible/inedible metrics allow insurers and banks to develop performance-based financial products (e.g. lower premiums or green loans linked to measured waste reduction), generating new revenue streams.

9. Social & Environmental Value at EU Scale

• Reducing 30 % of household food waste EU-wide would save roughly 26 Mt CO₂-eq/year, equivalent to the annual emissions of Denmark, and free resources to provide 1.6 bn meals—addressing food insecurity hotspots identified by Eurostat.

• Inclusive, cross-cultural behavioural insights support EU social-cohesion objectives, ensuring interventions do not exacerbate inequalities.

10. Actionable Recommendations for Applicants

1. Form a geographically balanced consortium (≥12 MS) to satisfy ‘significant number of Member States’ criterion and gain high-score on excellence & impact.

2. Integrate EOSC compliance from day one—budget for metadata engineering and FAIR data stewardship.

3. Secure letters of intent from national statistical offices or waste-management authorities to prove policy-uptake potential.

4. Plan a blended-finance roadmap: RIA (TRL 3-6) ➜ LIFE/ERDF demos (TRL 7-8) ➜ Innovation Fund / private VC for market entry.

5. Leverage existing EU platforms (CHORIZO, WASTELESS results) to avoid duplication and demonstrate European added value.

Bottom Line: Operating at EU level transforms a standard RIA into a strategic lever for harmonised data, policy impact and market creation that no single Member State initiative could achieve on its own.