EU-Wide Advantages & Opportunities – HORIZON-INFRA-2025-01-EOSC-05

1. Single Market Access to Data, Talent & Demand

• A grant-funded EOSC GenAI layer instantly addresses a unified market of 450 + million citizens, 2 million researchers and 70 000 research organisations without intra-EU licensing barriers.

• Federated repositories allow one-stop discovery of multi-lingual, multi-disciplinary datasets, turning the whole EU into a ‘living laboratory’ for GenAI experimentation.

• SMEs and start-ups in the consortium can pilot services simultaneously in 27 Member States, speeding up commercial proof-of-concept and time-to-market.

2. Cross-Border Collaboration & Knowledge Exchange

• Mandatory international consortia foster complementary excellence (e.g. Nordic earth-observation data + German materials science + Mediterranean health datasets).

• Built-in links to GenAI4EU, AI4EOSC, iMagine, EOSC Data Commons and RI-SCALE create ready-made collaboration pipelines and avoid duplication.

• Inclusion of the Joint Research Centre (JRC) offers neutral scientific validation and policy-science bridging.

3. Alignment with EU Flagship Policies

• Direct delivery on GenAI4EU, the Digital Europe Programme, the European Data Strategy and the Open Science Policy Agenda.

• Supports Green Deal missions (climate modelling, biodiversity monitoring) and the EU Health Union (FAIR clinical data, drug design).

• Contributes to Secure & Trusted AI goals in the forthcoming AI Act by embedding transparency, explainability and bias-mitigation in research pipelines.

4. Regulatory Harmonisation & Legal Certainty

• One GDPR framework and impending AI Act allow a single compliance design, rather than 27 national regimes.

• EOSC’s federated Identity & Access Management (AARC/AARC2 standards) simplifies lawful cross-border data sharing, including sensitive health or mobility data.

• Common licences (CC-BY, CERN-OHL, EOSC IP policy) minimise transactional costs when reusing code, models and datasets.

5. Pan-European Innovation Ecosystem Leverage

• Easy connectivity to EuroHPC JU supercomputers, GAIA-X nodes, EDIH (European Digital Innovation Hubs) and EIT KICs accelerates scaling.

• Access to 300 + Research Infrastructures on ESFRI Roadmap (e.g. ELIXIR, EMBRC, EISCAT) gives domain-specific testbeds for GenAI pilots.

• Participation demonstrates compliance with ‘European-by-design’ principles, which is attractive to venture capital and corporate adopters.

6. Funding Synergies

• Blending possible with Digital Europe (DEP) calls on Data Spaces & Testing Facilities, EuroHPC procurements, EIC Pathfinder Transition for spin-outs, and Cohesion Policy smart-specialisation funds for regional GenAI labs.

• InvestEU and venture debt from EIB can finance post-grant upscale, de-risked by Horizon validation.

7. Scale, Replicability & Societal Impact

• EOSC’s federated architecture ensures any tool or policy created in the project can be replicated by >130 federated repositories, maximising ROI and uptake.

• EU-wide multilingual GenAI models (e.g. 24 official languages) increase inclusivity and scientific diversity.

• Open-licensed datasets and software become global reference assets, reinforcing Europe’s strategic autonomy in AI.

8. Strategic Recommendations for Applicants

1. Build a geographically balanced consortium (≥3 MS/AC) that includes:

• At least one ESFRI Landmark RI (data provider).

• SMEs/Start-ups focusing on GenAI tooling.

• Public-sector data holder (e.g. meteorological or health agency).

• Social science/ethics partner for bias & trust assessment.

2. Map deliverables to concrete EU policy KPIs (e.g. Digital Decade 2030 targets, European Research Area Action 1).

3. Design open training assets (MOOCs, hackathons) in multiple EU languages to boost uptake and satisfy the call’s capacity-building requirement.

4. Plan interoperability with parallel topic HORIZON-INFRA-2025-01-EOSC-03 to exploit synergies on machine-actionability.

5. Anticipate EOSC IP clauses: establish a clear data & software management plan guaranteeing royalty-free non-commercial access for EOSC Association.

Bottom Line

Operating at EU scale via this call multiplies impact: one project can shape continental AI standards, unlock cross-sector data at unprecedented volume and speed, and place European science at the forefront of trustworthy Generative AI.