EU-Wide Advantages & Opportunities under the call HORIZON-INFRA-2025-01-EOSC-03

Executive Snapshot

The call "Advancing AI-readiness and Machine-Actionability in the EOSC Ecosystem" offers a unique chance to build a pan-European, AI-ready research fabric. By operating at EU rather than member-state level, applicants can:

• unlock the Single Market of 450+ million consumers and 1.9 million researchers;

• tap into a harmonised regulatory space (AI Act, Data Governance Act, DSA) that reduces legal friction;

• align with flagship EU strategies (Digital Europe, Green Deal, GenAI4EU, Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan, CHIPS Act); and

• combine funding streams (Horizon Europe, Digital Europe, EuroHPC, ERDF, RRF) to scale beyond the life of a single grant.

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1. Single Market Access

• Pan-EU data pooling: FAIR-ified, machine-actionable repositories aggregated via EOSC give innovators seamless access to domain datasets that are otherwise siloed behind national borders—crucial for training robust AI models.

• Commercial valorisation pathways: Although RIA results remain largely open, SMEs can spin out value-added services (e.g., data-cleaning APIs, AI model fine-tuning) across 27 countries without re-negotiating bilateral agreements, accelerating time-to-market.

• Demand aggregation: Health, energy, climate and cultural-heritage sectors share common digital needs; an EU-scale platform creates critical mass and wider customer bases for downstream solutions.

2. Cross-Border Collaboration & Knowledge Exchange

• Multinational consortia: The topic explicitly invites federation of horizontal (generic) and thematic (discipline-specific) EOSC nodes. This enables EIROs, industry, universities and SMEs from different member states to co-develop interoperable tool-chains.

• Mobility of experts: The planned EOSC AI/ML Competency Centre will act as an EU “talent hub”, lowering barriers for researchers to access transnational compute and mentorship, and stimulating circulation of skills.

• Inter-RI synapses: Alignment with ESFRI, EuroHPC JU, EGI, GEANT and national e-infrastructures multiplies know-how and avoids duplication.

3. Alignment with EU Policy Priorities

| EU Strategy | Contribution of the Call |

|-------------|--------------------------|

| Digital Europe Programme (DEP) | Complement DEP cloud-to-edge and data-spaces projects by providing FAIR, AI-ready research data and reusable reference implementations |

| Green Deal & Climate Missions | AI workflows for climate modelling, energy optimisation and biodiversity monitoring benefit from federated, trusted data lakes |

| GenAI4EU & Coordinated Plan on AI | Directly delivers AI infrastructures and retraining services compliant with upcoming AI Act requirements |

| European Health Data Space | Trusted repositories & provenance tools strengthen privacy-preserving, cross-border health research |

| European Research Area (ERA) | Facilitates open science & research excellence circulation, core pillars of ERA Policy Agenda 2025 |

4. Regulatory Harmonisation Benefits

• Single set of compliance rules: GDPR, AI Act, Data Governance Act and the EOSC Rules of Participation offer one legal framework instead of 27, decreasing transaction costs.

• Trust & certification: EU-wide certification schemes (eIDAS 2.0, EU Cloud Rulebook) boost confidence in federated repositories, essential for sensitive domains such as health or defence-related research.

5. Access to Europe’s Innovation Ecosystem

• World-class RIs: Tap into CERN, EMBL-EBI, CESSDA, ICOS, etc., providing unique, high-value datasets for AI training.

• Startup & SME pipelines: EDIH network and EIC Accelerator can incubate spinoffs that exploit project results.

• Talent & education: Synergies with Erasmus+, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions and Digital Skills programmes to build sustainable human capital around EOSC AI services.

6. Funding Synergies

1. Digital Europe HPC & AI Factories – co-locate compute, storage and model repositories developed here.

2. EuroHPC JU – leverage petascale / exascale systems for large-scale model training.

3. ERDF & Interreg – finance regional EOSC nodes or data-centre upgrades that host federated services.

4. Recovery & Resilience Facility (RRF) – many national plans earmark digitalisation funds that can co-finance hardware or skills programmes aligned with the project.

5. InvestEU & EIB – post-grant scaling capital for market-ready platforms.

7. EU-Wide Scale & Impact Potential

• Critical mass of users: By integrating existing EOSC nodes, the project can immediately reach >2 million researchers and 20 000+ data stewards.

• Network effect: Each additional repository or AI model onboarded increases the utility for all users—classic flywheel effect achievable only at EU scale.

• Standard-setting power: Open protocols and policies produced can become de-facto global standards, reinforcing EU digital sovereignty.

• Societal impact: Accelerated discovery in climate, health, materials and social sciences addresses EU missions and SDGs, benefiting 450+ million citizens.

8. Strategic Recommendations for Proposers

1. Build a geographically balanced consortium (at least 3 MS/AC; include widening countries) to score high on excellence & impact.

2. Map to policy flagships explicitly (GenAI4EU, Data Spaces, AI Act conformity) in the Impact section.

3. Plan strong links with EOSC Association & Partnership Board to meet additional award criteria on coordination.

4. Design a sustainability & business model leveraging DEP or EIC follow-on funding; articulate how the Competency Centre evolves into a permanent EOSC service.

5. Integrate standardisation bodies (e.g., CEN-CENELEC, ISO/TC 276) to fast-track adoption of MA protocols.

6. Address IP & royalty-free obligations early—decide which foreground can be opened and which value-added layers can remain commercial to satisfy both R&I and business goals.

7. Embed ethics-by-design (AI Act risk tiers, transparency, bias mitigation) to future-proof outputs and ease industrial uptake.

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Bottom Line

The EOSC-03 call is more than a research grant: it is a launchpad for a continent-wide AI-ready data infrastructure. Leveraging EU integration multiplies scientific excellence, market opportunities and societal benefits that no single member state could realise alone.