EU-Wide Advantages & Opportunities

for the call "Exploring options to resolve land and sea use competition" (HORIZON-CL6-2025-03-GOVERNANCE-05)

1. Single Market Access (450 + million citizens)

• Develop a deliberation tool that is natively multi-language and fully compliant with EU open-data standards (INSPIRE, Open Data Directive), allowing immediate roll-out in all 27 Member States and Associated Countries.

• Facilitate a common evidence base to inform CAP Strategic Plans, Marine Spatial Planning regulations and National Energy & Climate Plans, accelerating market demand for digital decision-support services across Europe’s EUR 1 trillion agri-food–bioeconomy value chain.

2. Cross-Border Collaboration & Knowledge Exchange

• The topic explicitly requests a network of regions covering different socio-economic situations and climate zones. This enables:

• Testing tool performance from Baltic to Mediterranean and Atlantic to Danube basins.

• Joint learning on trade-offs between forestry, aquaculture, offshore renewables and biodiversity across borders (e.g. North Sea wind-farm–fisheries interface).

• Access to EU mobility schemes (MSCA Staff Exchanges, COST Actions) to cross-fertilise methodologies and build a new generation of bioeconomy planners.

3. Alignment with Flagship EU Policies

• European Green Deal, Fit-for-55, Biodiversity Strategy & Nature Restoration Law – the proposal becomes a practical enabler of policy coherence.

• Circular Economy & Bioeconomy Strategies – tool delivers metrics (SEEA, LCA) needed for EU Taxonomy compliance and sustainable finance disclosures (SFDR).

• Digital Europe & Data Strategy – opportunity to prototype a Common European Data Space on Biomass & Land/Sea Use, linking Copernicus, Eurostat and national cadastral data.

4. EU Regulatory Harmonisation & Policy Influence

• Outcomes feed directly into JRC’s IBLUA upgrade, influencing forthcoming legislative revisions (e.g. post-2027 CAP, revision of the Renewable Energy Directive) and setting a de facto analytical standard adopted by ministries across the Union.

• Early involvement of CEN/CENELEC and ETSI can fast-track a voluntary European Standard for “Integrated Bioeconomy Land/Sea Accounting”, reducing compliance costs for companies that operate in multiple Member States.

5. Access to Europe’s Innovation Ecosystem

• Direct collaboration with JRC, ESFRI research infrastructures (e.g. ICOS, LifeWatch, eLTER), Copernicus DIAS platforms and the EuroGEO community provides world-class datasets and HPC capacity without national duplication.

• Engage with EIT Knowledge & Innovation Communities (Climate-KIC, Food, Manufacturing) to accelerate prototyping and business model development.

6. Funding Synergies & Leveraging Instruments

• Combine Horizon lump-sum grant with:

• Interreg NEXT for cross-border pilot regions.

• LIFE 2027+ for large-scale restoration actions identified by the tool.

• CAP eco-schemes & EIP-AGRI Operational Groups for farmer-level demonstrations.

• EMFAF for blue-bioeconomy pilots.

• InvestEU & EIB Natural Capital Financing Facility to scale validated solutions.

7. EU-Scale Deployment & Market Uptake

• Lump-sum model reduces administrative burden, speeding up delivery and replication.

• Modular open-source architecture fosters commercial spin-offs (SaaS) targeting regional authorities and SMEs across Europe, creating a pan-EU market for land/sea-use analytics valued at >€1 bn by 2030.

8. Socio-Economic Impact & Just Transition

• Tool will quantify distributional effects by region, supporting Territorial Just Transition Plans and Cohesion Policy objectives, particularly in biomass-dependent regions (e.g. Baltic peatlands, coal-to-bioenergy transitions in PL, CZ, RO).

• Promotes participatory governance models that are transferable to EU Enlargement and Neighbourhood countries, strengthening EU leadership.

9. Strategic Consortium Configuration (EU Perspective)

• Minimum 8-10 regions, ensuring geographic balance (Atlantic, Nordic-Baltic, Continental, Mediterranean, Outermost).

• Mix of:

• Research leaders (e.g. Wageningen, INRAE, IIASA, GEOMAR).

• Regional authorities (e.g. Junta de Andalucía, Västra Götaland, Pomerania).

• Tech-SMEs/Scale-ups with EO & AI expertise.

• NGOs & citizen science networks for social acceptance.

• JRC as associated partner or beneficiary for seamless policy uptake.

10. Actionable EU-Level Recommendations

• Embed FAIR data outputs in the European Open Science Cloud; mandate Creative Commons licensing to maximise re-use.

• Align indicators with SDG, SEEA-EA, Eurostat’s Climate Change Mitigation Indicator Set and the emerging Global Biodiversity Monitoring Framework for global relevance.

• Plan a policy sandbox with DG AGRI, DG ENV, DG MARE and DG ENER to stress-test conflicting objectives under real EU legislative scenarios.

• Prepare a roadmap for formal hand-over of the tool to the Knowledge Centre for Bioeconomy after project end, ensuring sustainability.

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#### Quick EU-Value Checklist for Proposal Writers

• [ ] Demonstrates clear complementarity with JRC IBLUA & Soil Mission.

• [ ] Covers >5 biogeographical regions and both land & sea domains.

• [ ] Integrates Copernicus, SEEA & Eurostat datasets (harmonised).

• [ ] Includes exploitation plan with CEN standardisation pathway.

• [ ] Leverages at least two additional EU funds / programmes.

• [ ] Addresses social justice, gender and youth engagement under the Just Transition principle.

> By capitalising on the EU’s single market, harmonised regulatory landscape and unparalleled research infrastructure network, consortia can magnify the scientific excellence, policy relevance and commercial impact of their project far beyond what any individual Member State could achieve alone.