EU-Wide Advantages and Strategic Opportunities of the Grant HORIZON-CL6-2025-02-FARM2FORK-05

1. Single Market Access

• Immediate testing ground covering 450 + million consumers and 10.5 million farms, enabling rapid market penetration for validated phytosanitary innovations.

• Uniform plant-health import requirements under Regulation (EU) 2016/2031 mean that once a systems-approach protocol is accepted in one Member State it can circulate EU-wide without duplicate authorisations, cutting commercialisation time by up to 18-24 months.

• Opportunity to embed innovative measures into forthcoming CAP Strategic Plans (2028-2034) so that national authorities can co-finance uptake—providing an extra pull mechanism for adoption.

2. Cross-Border Collaboration and Knowledge Exchange

• Multinational consortia can pool entomology, pathology, socio-economics and digital expertise scattered across climatic zones (Mediterranean, Continental, Nordic). This increases statistical power, allowing robust validation of systems approaches against diverse pest pressure scenarios.

• Access to 3 700+ EIP-AGRI Operational Groups and 40+ Agro-ecology Living Labs for real-time co-creation and farmer feedback.

• Alignment with the International Plant Protection Convention’s Systems Approach (ISPM 14) facilitates twinning with third-country NPPOs, strengthening EU export leverage.

3. Alignment with EU Flagship Policies

• Direct contribution to the Green Deal, Farm to Fork and Biodiversity Strategy targets of 50 % pesticide-risk reduction and zero net land-degradation.

• Supports the Sustainable Use of Pesticides Regulation (SUR) by offering non-chemical preventive measures and thus de-risking policy implementation for Member States.

• Fits Horizon Europe destination ‘Fair, healthy and environment-friendly food systems’, reinforcing EU strategic autonomy in plant-health technologies.

• Digital Europe Programme synergies: traceability and sensor data generated by the project can feed into Agriculture of Data partnership, boosting the EU Dataspace for Food.

4. Regulatory Harmonisation Benefits

• Single dossier evaluation via EU Standing Committee on Plants, Animals, Food and Feed means lower compliance costs compared to navigating 27 separate regimes.

• Harmonised residue definitions and MRLs facilitate simultaneous authorisation of non-chemical treatments (e.g., cold-chain, UV-C) for intra-EU trade.

• Consistent training curricula under Better Training for Safer Food (BTSF) can mainstream project results into national plant-health inspectorates.

5. Access to Europe’s Innovation Ecosystem

• Leverage 140+ cutting-edge research infrastructures listed in ESFRI (e.g., AnaEE for agro-ecosystem experimentation, ELIXIR for bio-informatics on pest genomes).

• Collaboration opportunities with EIT Food nodes for acceleration, business mentoring and market launch.

• JRC participation offers pan-European socio-economic impact assessment and science-policy interfacing, increasing policy uptake probability.

6. Funding Synergies and Leverage

• CAP rural-development eco-schemes and Erasmus+ Alliances for Innovation can finance farmer training built within the project, extending impact post-2029.

• Interreg Europe and LIFE can fund cross-border pilot corridors (production-logistics-retail) to prove scalability.

• Digital Europe and Connecting Europe Facility can co-invest in data platforms and IoT infrastructure required for traceability-based phytosanitary systems.

7. Scale and Impact Potential

• Replicability across 5 major EU climatic zones demonstrates robustness, a prerequisite for harmonised EU risk-assessment procedures.

• Project results can feed directly into EU market access protocols with trading partners (USA, Japan, ASEAN), enhancing competitiveness of EU exporters.

• Aggregated greenhouse-gas savings (via avoided fumigation and better logistics) help Member States meet Effort Sharing Regulation targets.

8. Strategic Value of Operating at EU Scale

• Critical mass of pest incidence data and socio-economic variables only achievable with EU-wide sampling; national-level projects lack the diversity required for systems-approach validation.

• EU brand value and regulatory leadership create first-mover advantage for consortia SMEs, opening global licensing opportunities.

• Pan-European stakeholder platform can shape upcoming revisions of ISPM 14 and EU plant-health legislation, locking in project-derived standards internationally.

9. Actionable Recommendations for Applicants

1. Build a consortium covering at least 12 Member States plus 2 widening countries to maximise climatic and regulatory representativeness.

2. Dedicate one work package to mapping CAP eco-schemes and national plant-health derogations to facilitate post-project uptake.

3. Ring-fence 8-10 % of budget for Financial Support to Third Parties to engage high-tech SMEs (e.g., sensor, AI providers) from EIT Food start-up cohorts.

4. Include a policy observatory led by SSH partners to deliver real-time briefs to DG SANTE and DG AGRI.

5. Plan for a Horizon Results Booster pathway to exploit IP at EU level within 24 months of project end.

By exploiting these EU-wide advantages, applicants can deliver transformative, regulation-ready phytosanitary systems that are economically attractive, environmentally superior and politically timely, positioning the consortium—and the EU as a whole—at the global forefront of plant-health innovation.