EU-Wide Advantages and Opportunities under HORIZON-MISS-2025-05-SOIL-06

1. Single Market Access: 450+ Million Consumers

- Uniform Soil-Health Metrics generated by the project (iMAP coefficients, EU-wide indicators) allow agri-input companies, technology providers and advisory services to commercialise *validated

• soil-improvement products and decision-support tools simultaneously in 27 Member States.

- Pan-European Labelling & Carbon-Credit Schemes: robust, comparable data on SOC and GHG effects can underpin EU-wide eco-labels and voluntary carbon markets, opening an integrated market for climate-smart commodities.

- Demand Pull from the CAP: once findings are embedded in CAP eco-schemes, *every

• EU farmer eligible for CAP payments (≈6.5 million holdings) becomes a potential user of project outputs.

2. Cross-Border Collaboration & Knowledge Exchange

- Mandatory Multi-Actor Approach encourages consortia that mix Nordic, Atlantic, Continental, Mediterranean and Eastern pedo-climatic zones—speeding up transfer of locally proven practices (e.g. Spanish dry-land cover-cropping to Bulgarian loess soils).

- Access to 100 Mission Soil Living Labs & Lighthouses accelerates on-farm testing across borders, shortening the innovation cycle.

- Joint work with EUSO, SoilWise, the JRC and the Agroecology Partnership provides built-in channels for standardisation, dissemination and policy feedback.

3. Alignment with Flagship EU Policies

- European Green Deal: delivers evidence for Farm-to-Fork targets on fertiliser, pesticide and nutrient losses.

- Soil Monitoring & Resilience Directive (SMR): the project’s FAIR datasets will be *directly reusable

• by Member States when reporting under the new Directive.

- Digital Europe & Destination Earth (DestinE): AI-driven meta-analysis and dynamic modelling can plug into EU super-computing and digital twin initiatives.

- Circular Economy & Bioeconomy Strategies: quantifying benefits of organic amendments links waste valorisation chains across Europe.

4. Regulatory Harmonisation Benefits

- A single, science-based evidentiary package accepted by DG AGRI, DG ENV and DG CLIMA allows Member States to update their CAP Strategic Plans without duplicating national studies, cutting administrative costs.

- Harmonised indicators facilitate mutual recognition of soil-health certificates, reducing compliance barriers for agri-businesses operating in multiple countries.

5. Access to Europe’s Innovation Ecosystem

- Use of ESFRI Infrastructures (eLTER RI, ICOS, LifeWatch, AnaEE) gives partners world-class instrumentation and long-term datasets at marginal cost.

- EJP SOIL repositories and Copernicus Earth-observation layers provide ready-to-use baselines, dramatically lowering the project’s data-collection burden.

- Connection with EIP-AGRI Operational Groups (~1 000 soil-related OGs) ensures rapid translation of results into farm advice services.

6. Funding Synergies & Leverage

- CAP Pillar II (AECM) & Eco-Scheme Budgets (~€50 bn/y) can be aligned to scale validated practices once the project quantifies impacts.

- LIFE, INTERREG, Erasmus+ and Digital Europe can fund follow-up pilots, capacity-building and digital tool roll-out.

- National Recovery & Resilience Plans (RRF) often include soil-carbon or precision-ag investments that can co-finance Living Labs.

7. EU-Scale Deployment & Impact Potential

- Quantified adoption scenarios (mandatory in the call) enable policy makers to model EU-wide GHG mitigation, water retention and biodiversity gains, supporting 2030 & 2050 climate targets.

- Public, FAIR datasets become the *de facto

• reference for future Horizon Europe, LIFE and CAP evaluations—multiplying citation and uptake.

- Replicability Beyond the EU: a harmonised EU methodology becomes an exportable standard for Candidate Countries and trading partners, enhancing EU geopolitical influence on sustainable agriculture.

8. Strategic Value versus National-Only Projects

1. Economies of Scale in Data: nationwide studies cannot cover the diversity of 20 main EU soil regions; EU projects avoid fragmented, non-comparable methods.

2. Policy Uptake Certainty: findings co-created with DG AGRI/JRC have a *direct legislative pathway

• into CAP revisions—unmatched at national level.

3. Risk Mitigation: pan-EU consortia diversify climatic risk and ensure that results remain valid under future climate variability.

4. Brand & Visibility: positioning as a flagship Mission Soil RIA confers EU-level credibility, easing later private investment and societal acceptance.

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Bottom Line: Participating in HORIZON-MISS-2025-05-SOIL-06 unlocks strategic EU-wide advantages—from immediate access to the Single Market and harmonised regulation, to powerful funding synergies and unrivalled scaling potential—far exceeding what is achievable through isolated national initiatives.