COMMISSION IMPLEMENTING DECISION

of 15.12.2021

amending Implementing Decision C(2021)1940 final on the adoption of the work programme for 2021-2022 within the framework of the Specific Programme implementing Horizon Europe – the Framework Programme for Research and Innovation and on its financing, as regards Missions

THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION,

Having regard to the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union,

Having regard to Regulation (EU, Euratom) 2018/1046 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 18 July 2018 on the financial rules applicable to the general budget of the Union, amending Regulations (EU) No 1296/2013, (EU) No 1301/2013, (EU) No 1303/2013, (EU) No 1304/2013, (EU) 1309/2013, (EU) No 1316/2013, (EU) No 223/2014, (EU) No 283/2014, and Decision No 541/2014/EU and repealing Regulation (EC, Euratom) No 966/2012 1 , and in particular Article 110 thereof,

Having regard to Regulation (EU) 2021/695 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 28 April 2021 establishing Horizon Europe – the Framework Programme for Research and Innovation, laying down its rules for participation and dissemination, and repealing Regulations (EU) No 1290/2013 and (EU) No 1291/2013 2  (hereinafter referred to as “Regulation (EU) 2021/695”), and in particular Article 8 thereof, 

Having regard to Council Decision (EU) 2021/764/EU of 10 May 2021 establishing the Specific Programme implementing Horizon Europe – the Framework Programme for Research and Innovation, and repealing Decision 2013/743/EU 3 , and in particular Article 13(2), point (b), thereof,

Whereas:

(1)Decision C(2021)1940 final 4 , as amended by Decision C(2021)4200 5 and Decision C(2021)7804 6 , and rectified by corrigendum C(2021)6096 7 , sets out the work programme for 2021 and 2022, within the Specific Programme implementing Horizon Europe, for the programme parts ‘General Introduction’, ‘Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions’, ‘Research infrastructures’, ‘Health’, ‘Culture, creativity and inclusive society’, ‘Civil security for society’, ‘Digital, industry and space’, ‘Climate, energy and mobility’, ‘Food, bioeconomy, natural resources, agriculture and environment’, ‘European innovation ecosystems’, ‘Widening participation and strengthening the European Research Area’, ‘Missions’ and ‘General Annexes’.

(2)Annex XII to Decision C(2021)1940 final included actions to support the preparatory phase of the five identified missions 8 , namely ‘Adaptation to climate change’, ‘Cancer’, ‘Climate-neutral and smart cities’, ‘Ocean, seas and waters’ and ‘Soil health and food’. Following the Commission’s assessment during the second and third Quarter of 2021 of the implementation plans developed for each mission after the adoption of Regulation (EU) 2021/695, and the adoption of the Commission’s Communication on European missions 9 , the missions should now enter the implementation phase.

(3)It is therefore necessary to add a number of specific actions and designate budgetary resources to the ‘Missions’ work programme part and to adjust the budgetary overview tables in the contributing work programme parts ‘Health’, ‘Culture, creativity and inclusive society’, ‘Civil security for society’, ‘Digital, industry and space’, ‘Climate, energy and mobility’, and ‘Food, bioeconomy, natural resources, agriculture and environment’. 

(4)In particular, a new topic should be included in the ‘Research infrastructures’ work programme part to support the implementation of the European Research Area (ERA) policy agenda.

(5)The ‘European partnership fostering a European Research Area (ERA) for health research’ in the work programme part ‘Health’ should also be updated.   

(6)In the work programme part ‘Digital, industry and space’, the opening and submission dates for five topics should be modified in order to allow applicants to prepare properly.

(7)Two new actions should be included in the work programme part ‘Climate, energy and mobility’, notably an indirectly managed action aiming at mobilising investments to build large-scale commercial demonstration projects for clean technologies and a grant to identified beneficiary ‘Support for the SET Plan Conference 2022’. 

(8)In the work programme part ‘Widening participation and strengthening the European Research Area’ a new grant ‘Presidency event – Conference on international cooperation in research and innovation’ should be added and the public procurement action ‘Study on the link between research careers and the Research and Innovation framework programmes’ should be deleted.

(9)To reflect all the changes, Annex I (‘General Introduction’), Annex III (‘Research infrastructures’, Annex IV (‘Health’), Annex V (‘Culture, creativity and inclusive society’), Annex VI (‘Civil security for society’), Annex VII (‘Digital, industry and space’), Annex VIII (‘Climate, energy and mobility’), Annex IX (‘Food, bioeconomy, natural resources, agriculture and environment’), Annex XI (‘Widening participation and strengthening the European Research Area’) and Annex XII (‘Missions’) to Decision C(2021)1940 final should be amended accordingly.

(10)Decision C(2021)1940 final allocated to the work programme for 2021-2022 a total of EUR 7 316 621 468 from the 2021 budget and a total of EUR 7 378 430 964 from the 2022 budget.

(11)In view of the introduction of those actions, the requirement for timely and comprehensive implementation and the need for additional funding, the total amount from the 2021 budget allocated to the 2021-2022 work programme should be increased by an amount of EUR 548 641 728.77. The new total amount from the 2021 budget should therefore be set at EUR 7 865 263 196.77. Similarly, the total amount from the 2022 budget allocated to the 2021-2022 work programme should be increased by an amount of EUR 174 650 000.35. The new total amount from the 2022 budget should therefore be set at EUR 7 553 080 964.35.

(12)Decision C(2021)1940 final should be amended accordingly.

(13)The measures provided for in this Decision are in accordance with the opinion of the Programme Committee established by Article 14 of Council Decision 2021/764/EU.

HAS DECIDED AS FOLLOWS:

Sole Article

Implementing Decision C(2021)1940 final is amended as follows:

(1)Article 2 is replaced by the following:

‘Article 2
Union contribution

1. The maximum Union contribution for the implementation of the actions in the framework of the Specific Programme implementing Horizon Europe for 2021 is set at EUR 7 865 263 196.77, and shall be financed from the appropriations entered in the following lines of the general budget of the Union:

- budget line 01.020102: EUR 817 102 660;

- budget line 01.020103:EUR 289 240 000;

- budget line 01.020210: EUR 1 132 148 806.00, of which EUR 440 170 479.00 from NGEU appropriations;

- budget line 01.020220: EUR 167 682 800.17;

- budget line 01.020230: EUR 232 088 483.04;

- budget line 01.020240: EUR 1 814 750 895.15, of which EUR 440 331 901.00 from NGEU appropriations;

- budget line 01.020250: EUR 1 729 996 673.79, of which EUR 439 803 077.00 from NGEU appropriations;

- budget line 01.020260: EUR 1 165 909 971.62;

- budget line 01.020302: EUR 60 142 907;

- budget line 01.020401: EUR 366 400 000;

- budget line 01.020402: EUR 89 800 000.00.

The appropriations provided for in the first subparagraph may also cover interest due for late payment.

The implementation of this Decision for 2021 is subject to the availability of the appropriations provided for in the general budget of the Union for 2021.

2. The maximum Union contribution for the implementation of the actions in the framework of the Specific Programme implementing Horizon Europe for 2022 is set at EUR 7 553 080 964.35, and shall be financed from the appropriations entered in the following lines of the general budget of the Union:

- budget line 01.020102: EUR 874 726 125;

- budget line 01.020103: EUR 318 500 000;

- budget line 01.020210: EUR 936 520 350.00, of which EUR 441 157 083.00 from NGEU appropriations;

- budget line 01.020220: EUR 266 864 849.00;

- budget line 01.020230: EUR 195 853 031.35;

- budget line 01.020240: EUR 1 782 474 283.00, of which EUR 440 827 081.00 from NGEU appropriations;

- budget line 01.020250: EUR 1 702 263 796.00, of which EUR 440 044 081.00 from NGEU appropriations;

- budget line 01.020260: EUR 927 737 125.00

- budget line 01.020302: EUR 69 791 405;

- budget line 01.020401: EUR 391 500 000;

- budget line 01.020402: EUR 86 850 000.

The appropriations provided for in the first subparagraph may also cover interest due for late payment.

The implementation of this Decision for 2022 is subject to the availability of the appropriations provided for in the draft general budget of the Union for 2022, following the adoption of that budget by the budgetary authority or as provided for in the system of provisional twelfths.’;

(2)Annex I is replaced by the text set out in Annex I to this Decision;

(3)Annex III is replaced by the text set out in Annex II to this Decision;

(4)Annex IV is replaced by the text set out in Annex III to this Decision;

(5)Annex V is replaced by the text set out in Annex IV to this Decision;

(6)Annex VI is replaced by the text set out in Annex V to this Decision;

(7)Annex VII is replaced by the text set out in Annex VI to this Decision;

(8)Annex VIII is replaced by the text set out in Annex VII to this Decision;

(9)Annex IX is replaced by the text set out in Annex VIII to this Decision;

(10)Annex XI is replaced by the text set out in Annex IX to this Decision;

(11)Annex XII is replaced by the text set out in Annex X to this Decision.

Done at Brussels, 15.12.2021

(1)    OJ L 193, 30.7.2018, p. 1.

(2)    OJ L 170, 12.5.2021, p. 1.

(3)    OJ L 167, 12.5.2021, p. 1.

(4)    Commission Implementing Decision C(2021)1940 of 31 March 2021 on the adoption of the work programme for 2021-2022 within the framework of the Specific Programme implementing Horizon Europe – the Framework Programme for Research and Innovation and on its financing.

(5)    Commission Implementing Decision C(2021)4200 of 15 June 2021 amending Implementing Decision C(2021)1940 on the adoption of the work programme for 2021-2022 within the framework of the Specific Programme implementing Horizon Europe – the Framework Programme for Research and Innovation and on its financing.

(6)    Commission Implementing Decision C(2021)7804 of 28 October 2021 amending Implementing Decision C(2021)1940 on the adoption of the work programme for 2021-2022 within the framework of the Specific Programme implementing Horizon Europe – the Framework Programme for Research and Innovation and on its financing with regards to 21 actions for ‘Digital, Industry and Space’.

(7)    Corrigendum C(2021)6096 of 23 August 2021 to Commission Implementing Decision C(2021)4200 of 15 June 2021 amending Implementing Decision C(2021)1940 on the adoption of the work programme for 2021-2022 within the framework of the Specific Programme implementing Horizon Europe – the Framework Programme for Research and Innovation and on its financing.

(8)    The mission areas are set out in Annex VI p. I to Regulation (EU) 2021/695: Missions Area 1: Adaptation to Climate Change, including Societal Transformation; Mission Area 2: Cancer; Mission Area 3: Healthy Oceans, Seas, Coastal and Inland Waters; Mission Area 4: Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities; Mission Area 5: Soil Health and Food.

(9)    COM(2021)609 of 29 September 2021

EN

ANNEX I

“Annex I

Horizon Europe

Work Programme 2021-2022

1.General Introduction

Welcome to Horizon Europe!

Horizon Europe is the new EU flagship programme for research and innovation. It sets the best minds in Europe and the rest of the world to work on delivering excellent solutions to the key issues of our time, supporting the EU’s policy priorities and building a better future for the next generation in Europe.

This work programme will cover the years 2021-2022. It will foster excellence in research and support fellowships, training and exchanges for researchers through Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, build more connected and efficient European innovation ecosystems, create world-class research infrastructures, and support the green and digital transitions and target global challenges while supporting European industrial competiveness, not least through the introduction of EU missions. Finally, it will widen participation in the programme and strengthen the European Research Area.

This introduction describes how these actions will underpin EU policy priorities, and presents the main features of this work programme, which are aimed in particular at enhancing its impact and delivering results.

Horizon Europe is the most ambitious EU research and innovation programme ever

With Horizon Europe, the EU will invest €95.5 billion in research and innovation that will shape the future of Europe, making it the most ambitious research and innovation programme ever introduced by the EU.

A substantial part of this funding will be dedicated to targeted actions that support the green and digital transitions for our societies and economies as well as a sustainable recovery from the global crisis that has emerged following the COVID-19 pandemic. The aim of Horizon Europe in general, and this work programme in particular, is to create opportunities for the EU and the world of tomorrow from the challenges of today.

In line with the commitment made in the European Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (HERA) Incubator Communication 1 , a first version of this work programme was launched in March 2021 with focused action to target Covid-19 variants, securing the safety and effectiveness of our vaccines. €123 million was devoted to bring an additional concerted EU effort to further speed up the process of understanding the occurrence and spread of variants and their effect on disease severity and vaccine effectiveness. 2   This work programme introduces five EU missions to target some of the greatest societal challenges with coordinated effort in order to create deep societal transformations and social impact

In order to support our commitment to make EU the world’s first climate-neutral continent by 2050, Horizon Europe will direct a minimum of 35 % of the funding available to climate objectives. These funds will be used for projects that advance the science of climate change, develop solutions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and to adapt to the changing climate. For example, activities will accelerate the transition towards clean energy and mobility in a sustainable and fair way, help adapt food systems and support the circular and bio-economy, maintain and enhance natural carbon sinks in ecosystems, and foster adaptation to climate change. Jointly such activities will be fundamental to create the new products, services and business models needed to sustain or enable EU industrial leadership and competitiveness, and to create new markets for climate neutral and circular products.

The New European Bauhaus is an important initiative, which will greatly contribute greatly to the abovementioned objectives. This movement will blend sustainability, accessibility and inclusiveness with aesthetics to make the European Green Deal a ‘tangible’ experience, by exploring innovative, co-created solutions to complex problems.

In support of the digital transition, this work programme will foster research and innovation to make this decade Europe’s digital decade, and lay the ground work for new digital enterprises even further into the future. For instance, actions supported by this work programme will help to maximise the full potential of digital tools and data-enabled research and innovation in a wide range of sectors, such as healthcare, media, energy and mobility as well as food production, and support the deep transformations required for the modernisation of traditional industrial models. Using an EU-marker type calculation systems it is estimated that 33% of funds in the presented work programme, and 35% of funds across all parts of Horizon Europe contribute to the digital transition. This equals overall investments of €8.9 billion during 2021/22. The overall investment into main digital activities, i.e. the development of core digital technologies, is estimated at €4.0 billion in 2021/22.

Finally, this work programme will direct investments to build the NextGeneration EU helping repair the immediate economic and social damage brought about by the coronavirus pandemic and to create a post-COVID-19 Europe that is greener, more digital, more resilient and better fit for the current and forthcoming challenges. This includes topics contributing to a green, digitally-enabled recovery through modernising health systems, topics contributing to research capacities, in particular for vaccine development, and the European Health Data Space, and supporting a new potential Pandemic Preparedness Partnership.

In order to achieve these and other targets, Horizon Europe introduces a new level of ambition to maximise the impact of EU research and innovation investments for the benefit of European science, economy and the wider society, in line with EU values and in adherence with the highest ethics and integrity standards. Horizon Europe marks a paradigm change in the design of the EU research and innovation programmes by moving from an activity-driven to an impact-driven approach, which allows it to make targeted interventions, based on mutually agreed priorities. This is, for instance, reflected in the so-called destinations and topics of this work programme, which put forward the impacts we want to achieve and the outcomes we expect, but leave the manner of achieving them to the imagination and skills of the applicant.

As such, the new, impact-driven design of Horizon Europe aims at maximising the effects of its research and innovation investments, ensuring that they truly deliver on the EU’s policy priorities. It is about making sure that priorities are effectively met and translated into concrete action, while giving applicants maximum flexibility on how to achieve these goals.

Horizon Europe delivers on EU policy priorities

This work programme for 2021-2022 is the first step in delivering on the priorities set out in the first Strategic Plan for Horizon Europe for 2021-2024 5 . Based on the overarching EU policy priorities, the Strategic Plan sets out four key strategic orientations and 15 impact areas, which are based on 32 expected impacts that have been defined in an inclusive and ambitious strategic planning process. Each expected impact is targeted via dedicated packages of actions in the work programme. These are termed ‘destinations’, because they indicate both the specific direction and the ultimate point of arrival of the projects to be supported through Horizon Europe. An overview of all expected impacts of the Strategic Plan and the corresponding destinations in the work programme parts for clusters 1 to 6 can be found in the appendix to this introduction.

From EU priorities to work programme destinations

The four key strategic orientations in the Strategic Plan for Horizon Europe each define a set of higher-level objectives where research and innovation investments are expected to make a difference. The four key strategic orientations are:

Below, each key strategic orientation is presented along with its impact areas. For each impact area, some examples are given to illustrate the activities in the work programme that will implement it.

A - Promoting an open strategic autonomy 6 by leading the development of key digital, enabling and emerging technologies, sectors and value chains

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of digitalisation across all areas of EU society and economy. New technologies have kept our businesses and public services running and our family and social bonds afloat. Already today, the data economy lies at the heart of innovation and job creation, and the European Union has the ambition of empowering European citizens with digital solutions rooted in our common values and enriching the lives of all of us. This work programme will help shape innovative technologies and solutions in a wide range of applications. It will also underpin the open strategic autonomy of Europe and its global leadership in digital and emerging enabling technologies.

A total number of eleven expected impacts contribute to this key strategic objective and its four impact areas, all of which are being put into effect through this work programme. The following examples provide an illustration of how this is achieved:

ØTo promote industrial leadership in key and emerging technologies that work for people, the co-programmed Partnership on Artificial Intelligence, Data and Robotics will drive the development of trustworthy, safe and robust technologies that will boost new markets and applications and that are compatible with Europe’s ethical standards and values.

ØIn order to attain secure and cybersecure digital technology, this work programme supports research and innovation on cybersecure technology and its consequences. It includes topics such as ‘Secure and resilient digital infrastructures and interconnected systems’, ‘Artificial Intelligence for cybersecurity reinforcement’ and ‘Human-centric security, privacy and ethics’.

ØWith a view to supporting a competitive and secure data-economy, this work programme paves the way for a digitised, resource efficient and resilient industry, for example through research and innovation on earth-observation, remote sensing and digital platforms for the small-scale extractive industry.

ØTo make available high quality digital services for all, it fosters research and innovation on health-supporting technologies, for example on ‘Smart medical devices and their surgical implantation’ and ‘Innovative tools for use and re-use of health data’.

B - Restoring Europe’s ecosystems and biodiversity, and managing sustainably natural resources

Human activities create pressures on natural resources that go far beyond sustainable levels. This is affecting ecosystems and their capacity to provide multiple services for human well-being, while natural resources are being further degraded because of the impacts of climate change. The European Union has the ambition to halt biodiversity decline, protect and preserve ecosystems, manage natural resources on land and sea in a sustainable way, thereby ensuring food and nutrition security as well as a clean and healthy environment for all. Horizon Europe will thus advance knowledge, build capacities and provide innovative technologies and solutions to support the state and functioning of ecosystems, to ensure a clean and healthy environment and sustainable management of natural resources that provides for our needs and contributes to climate neutrality and adaptation.

The following examples give an idea of how the three impact areas under this orientation are being implemented through this work programme:

ØWith a view to developing sustainable food systems from farm to fork on land and sea, this work programme supports research and innovation on sustainable farming, fisheries and aquaculture as well as the transformation of food systems.  It does so through topics such as ‘Agroecological approaches for sustainable weed management’, ‘Digital transition supporting inspection and control for sustainable fisheries’ and ‘Transition to healthy and sustainable dietary behaviour.

ØAs a contribution to clean and healthy air, water and soil, this work programme will support research and innovation to prevent environmental contamination, for example with the topics ‘Regional nitrogen and phosphorus load reduction approach within safe ecological boundaries’ and ‘Increasing the circularity in textiles, plastics and/or electronics value chains’

ØTo enhance ecosystems and biodiversity on land and in waters, the European Partnership ‘Rescuing Biodiversity to Safeguard Life on Earth’ will provide a powerful platform to help bring biodiversity back on its path to recovery. With topics such as ‘Natural capital accounting: Measuring the biodiversity footprint of products and organizations’, the work programme will also support research and innovation to take into account better the value of biodiversity and ecosystem services in economic activities.

C - Making Europe the first digitally enabled circular, climate-neutral and sustainable economy

The European Union has the ambition to substantially reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 55 % in 2030, to become climate neutral by 2050 and turn into a more sustainable, bio-based, climate-neutral, circular, non- toxic and competitive economy. This requires unprecedented changes in the way we produce, trade, build, move around and consume, which will spur our technological, economic and societal transformation and contribute to a green recovery. This work programme will help transform the EU into a provider of green solutions for the benefit of all, and position Europe as a technological and industrial leader in the green transition industry, in order to make the EU climate neutral by transitioning all economic sectors.

This work programme contributes significantly to achieving the four impact areas under this orientation through seven expected impacts, as shown by the following examples:

ØTo promote climate change mitigation and adaptation, this work programme supports climate sciences and responses and cross-sectoral solutions for the climate transition through dedicated destinations.

ØWith a view to affordable and clean energy, it supports a broad portfolio of clean and efficient demand side technologies as well as renewable energy technologies – helping to improve the competitiveness of more mature technologies, and nurturing emerging technology solutions – and their smart integration into the overall energy system, thus boosting the energy transition in all its dimensions.

ØTo further advance smart and sustainable transport, research and innovation activities will pave the way for zero-emission, safe, resilient transport and Smart Mobility services for passengers and goods, for example in the field of Connected, Cooperative and Automated Mobility (CCAM).

ØAs a considerable contribution to circular and clean economy, this work programme will advance research and innovation on climate neutral, circular and digitised production and support a Partnership for Clean Steel, which will demonstrate EU leadership in the transformation of the steel industry into a carbon-neutral sector.

D - Creating a more resilient, inclusive and democratic European society

Social cohesion and inclusiveness and the health, well-being, rights and security of its citizens are central aims of the EU’s policies and programmes. To uphold such objectives, the EU needs to tackle the negative consequences of manifold challenges, such as those arising from demographic change, globalisation, climate changes, evolving security threats and rapid technological change. These are putting the well-being of citizens and communities under strain, thereby challenging business models, public services, as well as the foundations of the Single Market and Social Rights. Investments under Horizon Europe will be instrumental for the EU to develop stronger health systems, improve health technologies and develop the knowledge and innovations that underpin the health and well-being of all its citizens. Furthermore, Horizon Europe will develop innovations, policies and institutions to safeguard democratic governance, foster civic participation and enhance trust in democratic institutions, tackling polarisation and extremism. These will safeguard and promote Europe’s common values and cultural heritage, and support creative ways of cultivating independent critical thinking and inclusive debates. It will support innovative solutions for connecting education and training to emerging social and labour market needs while improving societal adaptation and citizens’ engagement in the green and digital transitions. It will also reinforce disaster risk management, border management and law enforcement while mitigating the negative effects of acute crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

This key strategic objective and four impact areas encompasses ten expected impacts, all of which become operative through the Horizon Europe work programme, as these examples illustrate:

ØTo secure good health and high-quality accessible healthcare, this work programme will contribute to research and innovation on tackling diseases and reducing their burden, through topics such as ‘Personalised medicine and infectious diseases’ and ‘Vaccines 2.0’.

ØTo promote a secure, open and democratic EU society, it will foster research on how to protect, nurture and reshape democracies, through topics such as ‘The impact of inequalities on democracy’, ‘The future of democracy and civic participation’ and ‘Politics and the impact of online social networks and new media’.

ØTo create a resilient EU prepared for emerging threats, research and innovation will enhance Europe’s disaster-resilience, through topics such as ‘Improved impact forecasting and early warning’ and ‘Disaster Risk Management and Governance’.

ØFinally, to foster inclusive growth and new job opportunities, research and innovation under this work programme will examine integration of emerging new technologies into education and training and inclusive labour markets and their impact on inequalities through specific topics.

Supporting priorities through international cooperation

International cooperation in research and innovation is essential for tackling global challenges such as climate change or global health security more effectively and underpins all the key strategic orientations of the Strategic Plan for Horizon Europe. It also enables Europe to access resources, know-how, scientific excellence, value chains and markets that are developing outside the EU.

This work programme will tap into the opportunities offered by international cooperation in order to maximise the impact of its actions. It includes dedicated actions to support and strengthen cooperation through multilateral initiatives in areas such as biodiversity and climate protection, environmental observations, ocean research or global health. It also includes targeted actions with key third-country partners, including the first ever ambitious and comprehensive ‘Africa Initiative’ that will draw on topics across the six clusters of Pillar II.

The openness of the work programme to international cooperation will be balanced with the need to safeguard EU interests in strategic areas, in particular to promote the EU’s open strategic autonomy and its technological leadership and competitiveness where it is necessary. Joint and coordinated calls will advance research and innovation in areas of mutual benefit, based on common approaches to the framework conditions. In a limited number of cases for actions related to Union strategic assets, interests, autonomy or security, actions will be limited to cooperation between Member States only, Member States and Associated Countries, and/or certain third countries. For duly justified and exceptional reasons participation can also be limited to legal entities established in the Union or in associated countries that are not directly or indirectly controlled by non-associated third countries or by legal entities of non-associated third countries, or make the participation of the controlled entities subject to conditions set out in the work programme.

Strengthening framework conditions for research and innovation

The four key strategic orientations identified in the Strategic Plan apply first and foremost to Pillar II of Horizon Europe, ‘Global challenges and European industrial competitiveness’, but due to their overarching relevance, they extend to other parts of Horizon Europe as well. Thanks to this integrated approach, synergies between different programme parts, even across pillars, are greatly facilitated. While other programme components will contribute greatly to the key strategic orientations, they will also address a number of other priorities described below. Overall, they will contribute to a stronger European research and innovation ecosystem through wider participation, greater mobility for researchers and world class research infrastructures.

The Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) respond to Europe’s continuing need for a highly-skilled and resilient human capital base in research and innovation that can easily adapt to, and find sustainable solutions for, current and future challenges. The COVID-19 crisis has highlighted once more that the EU relies on talents who are experts in their field but able to think across disciplines, while naturally regarding cross-border and international cooperation as a fundamental part of their work. The MSCA make an important contribution by equipping researchers with new knowledge and skills and providing them with international and inter-sectoral exposure. This is achieved by supporting researchers’ training and mobility through bottom-up and excellence-driven research in the framework of doctoral networks, postdoctoral fellowships 7 , staff exchanges and citizen outreach. The MSCA also have a structuring impact on higher education institutions and other R&I entities way beyond academia by widely spreading excellence and setting standards for high-quality researcher education and training, not only across the European Research Area (ERA) but also worldwide.

Europe’s research and innovation system depends on world-class research infrastructures that are open and accessible to all researchers in Europe and beyond. To fully tap their potential for ground-breaking research and innovation, it is important to reduce fragmentation, avoid duplication of effort, and better coordinate the design, development, accessibility and use of research infrastructures. This includes supporting open access for all European researchers and stimulating the up-take of open science and open data practices. The destinations of the work programme part on European research infrastructures cater exactly to these needs and will guide concrete action towards filling knowledge gaps and addressing emerging needs and science breakthroughs, notably in the field of health and in support of the green and digital transitions. In addition, efforts for further development and consolidation of research infrastructures will provide the ERA with a more effective, accessible, interlinked and well-functioning Research Infrastructure landscape. The use of research infrastructures across the Horizon Europe pillars is strongly encouraged.

Innovation ecosystems provide a stimulating environment within which innovation can flourish. Well-functioning innovation ecosystems provide a flow of ideas and knowledge, and they motivate a broad range of actors to join forces and develop innovative solutions. The work programme part on European Innovation Ecosystems (EIE) supports concrete actions to facilitate the extension and strengthening of these ecosystems. By pulling in new and under-represented actors and territories and reinforcing connectivity within and between ecosystems on a national, regional or local level, it aims at achieving collective ambitions for the benefit of society and sustainable business growth. The work programme encourages synergies with related EU funds and programmes and will act in complement with the European Innovation Council (EIC) and the European Institute for Innovation & Technology (EIT). In particular, the EIC Forum will promote coordination and dialogue on the development of the EU's innovation ecosystem, connecting the existing ecosystems with the EIC. Synergies also include the European Partnership on Innovative SMEs, which will help innovative SMEs to increase their research and innovation (R&I) capacity and productivity and to become embedded in global value chains and new markets.

The innovation ecosystems created by the EIT Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs) can in particular contribute to building communities or platforms for coordination and support actions, sharing knowledge or disseminating and fostering the exploitation of project results. Where relevant, it is encouraged to explore possible forms and means of service provisions distinct to the EIT KICs, that can be complementary to proposals and their activities. The collaboration with other innovation communities that can support project implementation and impact is also encouraged.

Despite much progress in developing the European Research Area, Europe still has a fragmented research and innovation landscape, and Member States face bottlenecks in their research and innovation systems, which require policy reforms. Similarly, the level of research and innovation investment in Europe is still far below the policy objective of 3% of GDP and continues to grow slowly. Hence, it is necessary to fully exploit the research and innovation potential of the ERA. The work programme part on Widening participation and strengthening the European Research Area contributes to the expected impacts of Horizon Europe by reducing the research and innovation divide and geographical disparities in research and innovation performance. It supports Member States in building the necessary capacities that allow them to successfully participate in research and innovation processes and, eventually, translate the results into the society and the economy.

Horizon Europe ensures continuity and brings in new features

The Horizon Europe work programme for 2021-2022 is shaped around the successes of and lessons learned from the EU’s previous research and innovation framework programmes. It continues and builds on a number of key elements, such as open access to research data and results, which have proven their worth and relevance. It also features a number of important novelties to further streamline and enhance the programme:

Gender equality – Gender equality is a cross-cutting priority in Horizon Europe and concerns all programme parts. The appropriate consideration of the gender dimension in research and innovation content 8 is mandatory for all applicants across the whole programme, unless the non-relevance of sex and/or gender analysis is indicated at topic level. Furthermore, Horizon Europe is promoting gender equality through sustainable institutional change by requesting that applicants (public bodies, research organisations and higher education establishments) have in place a gender equality plan.

Widening participation - While keeping excellence as the main feature, a wide spectrum of measures will foster participation in the work programme actions and facilitate collaborative links. For instance, the ex-post ‘Hop on’ feature will allow existing project consortia to expand by including participants from so-called ‘low R&I performing countries’, in order to build collaborative links and reduce the research and innovation divide across Europe.

A new generation of European Partnerships: Horizon Europe rationalises the number of partnerships that the EU co-programmes or co-funds involving a wide range of public and private partners, including national governments, industry, civil society organisations and funding organisations. This new approach ensures that the partnerships instrument of Horizon 2020 can continue in a simplified and more transparent form, reaching a broader set of stakeholders and creating stronger links with EU and national policies.

Making it easier for applicants – Horizon Europe will increase legal certainty and reduce administrative burden for beneficiaries and programme administrators. The aim is to provide a strong measure of continuity from Horizon 2020 while incorporating improvements across the project life cycle, from submission to efficient reporting and exploitation of results, as set out in the Implementation Strategy for Horizon Europe.

Synergies by design – The deployment and uptake of research results and innovative solutions developed in this work programme, and Horizon Europe in general, will be facilitated with the support of other European Union funding programmes. To make synergies between Horizon Europe and other programmes and policies happen, they are considered in design and strategic planning, project selection, management, communication, dissemination and exploitation of results.

Making sustainable investments – Horizon Europe’s objective is to support research and innovation activities that fully respect climate and environmental standards and priorities of the Union and cause no significant harm to any of them. The adoption of the EU Taxonomy Regulation 9 creates a common science-based classification system defining under which conditions economic activities in a given sector can be considered as environmentally sustainable. Horizon Europe projects will play an important role in helping economic operators reach or go beyond the standards and thresholds set up in the Regulation as technical screening criteria and to keep them up-to-date. This includes setting the bases for systemic changes over time delivering greater environmental benefits in the sector as compared to improving the environmental performance of individual economic activities. Most importantly, research and innovation activities’ compliance with the ‘do no significant harm’ principle 10 will ensure consistency with the European Green Deal objectives and promote the transition to a safe, climate-neutral, climate-resilient, more resource-efficient and circular economy.

Social innovation – i.e. innovation for societal impact and innovation with citizens as co-designers, co-developers, and co-implementers is a cross-cutting priority in Horizon Europe. Social innovation recognises the sociotechnical nature of all innovations, benefits the need for society to own innovation, and serves the profound changes in social practices required, inter alia, to achieve, the digital and energy transition, climate-neutrality, sustainable management of natural resources, and greater societal resilience in the face of health, climatic and other hazards.

Trustworthy technologies - All projects supported by this work programme will be in line with EU values and adhere to the highest ethics and integrity standards. Horizon Europe is spearheading the artificial intelligence ethics by design agenda. Due diligence will be required to make sure all AI-based systems or techniques used or developed will be trustworthy: ethical, lawful and robust, with particular attention to safety, accuracy, reliability and explainability.

Stakeholder involvement - The work programme for 2021 – 2022 is based on the Horizon Europe Strategic Plan, which has been designed with and for stakeholders. In an ambitious co-design process, involving Member States of the EU and the European Economic Area (EEA), the European Parliament and stakeholders from all over Europe and beyond, more than 8 000 contributions from a broad range of stakeholders have been synthesised into the first Strategic Plan for Horizon Europe that guides the first work programmes and ensures they focus on the issues that matter most to Europeans.

Overview of Strategic Plan’s key strategic orientations, expected impacts and corresponding work programme destinations

11

(1)

 COM(2021) 78 final: “HERA Incubator: Anticipating together the threat of COVID-19 variants”.    

(2)

As part of the EU response to the COVID-19 pandemic, for activities specifically linked to COVID-19, grants may be awarded without a call for proposals since that pandemic constitutes an exceptional emergency within the meaning of Article 195(b) of the Financial Regulation 2018/1046. Further conditions may be set out in the different work programme parts. Specific derogations and additional conditions may be also announced or communicated to the potential applicants. Such conditions that are set out in the different work programme parts may include additional exploitation obligations to ensure that the resulting products will be available and accessible as soon as possible, additional dissemination obligations, such as open access for research data needed to address the public health emergency, and justified derogations from the standard limits to financial support to third parties. The Commission will assess how the applicants propose to fulfil these conditions. The implementation of these conditions will be appropriately monitored. Where applicable, the relevant grant agreement options will be applied.

(3)

The Horizon Europe components European Research Council, Marie Sklodowska Curie Actions, the European Innovation Council, the European Institute of Innovation and Technology, as well as the institutionalised partnerships based on Articles 185/187 TFEU and the direct actions by the Joint Research Centre have a combined budget of 12.043 billion equal to 46.81% of Horizon Europe total.

(4)

EU-markers are based on the internationally recognized Rio-markers methods originally developed by OECD (see http://www.oecd.org/dac/environment-development/Revised%20climate%20marker%20handbook_FINAL.pdf). The EU markers assigns 0-40-100% markers to actions and their budgets depending on climate action having a major impact (100%), a significant impact (40%) or a marginal impact (0%) of an activity. In this work programme the - markers are applied to every topic described for climate action, biodiversity, clean air, digital transition and artificial intelligence. For other parts of Horizon Europe they are applied to larger groups of actions and in general to awarded projects for expenditure monitoring and documentation. Actions can be assigned more than one marker if they contribute substantially to more than one of the related objectives.

(5)

C(2021)1602 : COMMISSION IMPLEMENTING DECISION adopting the 2021-2024 strategic research and innovation plan in the framework of the specific programme implementing Horizon Europe – the Framework Programme for Research and Innovation. The Strategic Plan can be found here .

(6)

‘Open strategic autonomy’ refers to the term ‘strategic autonomy while preserving an open economy’, as reflected in the conclusions of the European Council 1–2 October 2020.

(7)

 Aiming to enhance nuclear expertise and excellence as well as synergies between Horizon Europe and the Euratom Programme, nuclear researchers are eligible to participate in MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships supported by an annual financial contribution from the Euratom Programme.

(8)

Integrating the gender dimension in research and innovation content is an umbrella term for integrating sex and/or gender analysis, that is, ensuring that the biological characteristics and the social/cultural features of both women and men are taken into account as relevant in the content of research and innovation projects. For more information see: https://ec.europa.eu/info/news/gendered-innovations-2-2020-nov-24_en

(9)

Regulation  (EU)  2020/852  of  the  European  Parliament  and  of  the Council  of  18  June  2020 on the establishment of a framework to facilitate sustainable investment, and amending Regulation (EU) 2019/2088

(10)

As defined in Articles 17  of  Regulation  (EU)  2020/852  of  the  European  Parliament  and  of  the Council  of  18  June  2020 on the establishment of a framework to facilitate sustainable investment, and amending Regulation (EU) 2019/2088

(11)

1: Full title: Democratic governance is reinvigorated by improving the accountability, transparency, effectiveness and trustworthiness of rule-of-law based institutions and policies

2: Full title: Inclusive growth through evidence-based policies for employment, education, social fairness and inequalities, including in response to the socio-economic challenges due to the COVID-19 pandemic

EN

ANNEX II

“Annex III

Horizon Europe

Work Programme 2021-2022

3. Research Infrastructures

”

Table of contents

Introduction    

DESTINATION – DEVELOPING, CONSOLIDATING AND OPTIMISING THE EUROPEAN RESEARCH INFRASTRUCTURES LANDSCAPE, MAINTAINING GLOBAL LEADERSHIP (INFRADEV)    

Call - Developing, consolidating and optimising the European research infrastructures landscape, maintaining global leadership (2021)    

Conditions for the Call    

HORIZON-INFRA-2021-DEV-01-01: Support to the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures    

HORIZON-INFRA-2021-DEV-01-02: Strengthen the bilateral cooperation on research infrastructures with Africa: improving the knowledge base on climate change in Africa    

HORIZON-INFRA-2021-DEV-01-03: Transition to digital/remote research infrastructure service provision: lessons learnt, needs and best practices    

HORIZON-INFRA-2021-DEV-01-04: Support to National Contact Points (NCPs) for Research Infrastructures    

HORIZON-INFRA-2021-DEV-01-05: Support to the e-Infrastructure Reflection Group (e-IRG)    

Call - Developing and consolidating the European research infrastructures landscape, maintaining global leadership (2021)    

Conditions for the Call    

HORIZON-INFRA-2021-DEV-02-01: Preparatory phase of new ESFRI research infrastructure projects    

HORIZON-INFRA-2021-DEV-02-02: Consolidation of the research infrastructure landscape – Individual support for ESFRI projects    

Call - Developing the European research infrastructures landscape, maintaining global leadership (2022)    

Conditions for the Call    

HORIZON-INFRA-2022-DEV-01-01: Research infrastructure concept development    

HORIZON-INFRA-2022-DEV-01-02: Cooperation, synergies and networking between research infrastructures and technology infrastructures    

DESTINATION – ENABLING AN OPERATIONAL, OPEN AND FAIR EOSC ECOSYSTEM (INFRAEOSC)    

Call - Enabling an operational, open and FAIR EOSC ecosystem (2021)    

Conditions for the Call    

Open Science practices and a digitally-skilled workforce    

HORIZON-INFRA-2021-EOSC-01-01: Supporting an EOSC-ready digitally skilled workforce    

HORIZON-INFRA-2021-EOSC-01-02: Supporting the development and coordination of activities of the EOSC Partnership    

Supporting EOSC-Core: Enabling access to the Web of FAIR data and services    

HORIZON-INFRA-2021-EOSC-01-03: Deploying EOSC-Core components for FAIR    

HORIZON-INFRA-2021-EOSC-01-04: Innovative and customizable services for EOSC    

Building with the scientific community a Web of FAIR data for open science    

HORIZON-INFRA-2021-EOSC-01-05: Enabling discovery and interoperability of federated research objects across scientific communities    

HORIZON-INFRA-2021-EOSC-01-06: FAIR and open data sharing in support of cancer research    

Call - Enabling an operational, open and FAIR EOSC ecosystem (2022)    

Conditions for the Call    

Open Science practices and a digitally-skilled workforce    

HORIZON-INFRA-2022-EOSC-01-01: Services and tools to underpin a research assessment system that incentivises open science practices    

HORIZON-INFRA-2022-EOSC-01-02: Improving and coordinating technical infrastructure for institutional open access publishing across Europe    

Building with the scientific community a Web of FAIR data for open science    

HORIZON-INFRA-2022-EOSC-01-03: FAIR and open data sharing in support of healthy oceans, seas, coastal and inland waters    

HORIZON-INFRA-2022-EOSC-01-04: Support for initiatives helping to generate global standards, specifications and recommendations for open sharing of FAIR research data, publications and software    

DESTINATION – RESEARCH INFRASTRUCTURE SERVICES TO SUPPORT HEALTH RESEARCH, ACCELERATE THE GREEN AND DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION, AND ADVANCE FRONTIER KNOWLEDGE (INFRASERV)    

Call - Research infrastructure services to support health research, accelerate the green and digital transformation, and advance frontier knowledge (2021)    

Conditions for the Call    

A challenge-driven provision of research infrastructure services    

HORIZON-INFRA-2021-SERV-01-01: Research infrastructures services to support research addressing cancer    

HORIZON-INFRA-2021-SERV-01-02: Research infrastructures services for a sustainable and resilient agriculture and agro-ecological transitions    

HORIZON-INFRA-2021-SERV-01-03: Research infrastructures services for responding to climate-related risks on the environment    

HORIZON-INFRA-2021-SERV-01-04: Research infrastructures services enabling the development of materials for a circular economy    

HORIZON-INFRA-2021-SERV-01-05: Research infrastructures services for sustainable and inclusive Global Value Chain and Europe recovery from socio-economic crises    

HORIZON-INFRA-2021-SERV-01-06: Enabling research infrastructure services for better use of imaging data to address challenges in thematic research areas    

Research infrastructures services advancing frontier knowledge    

HORIZON-INFRA-2021-SERV-01-07: Research infrastructures services advancing frontier knowledge    

Call - Research infrastructure services to support health research and accelerate the digital transformation (2022)    

Conditions for the Call    

HORIZON-INFRA-2022-SERV-01-01: Implementing digital services to empower neuroscience research for health and brain inspired technology via EBRAINS    

DESTINATION – NEXT GENERATION OF SCIENTIFIC INSTRUMENTATION, TOOLS AND METHODS AND ADVANCED DIGITAL SOLUTIONS (INFRATECH)    

Call - Next generation of scientific instrumentation, tools and methods (2021)    

Conditions for the Call    

HORIZON-INFRA-2021-TECH-01-01: Interdisciplinary digital twins for modelling and simulating complex phenomena at the service of research infrastructure communities    

Call - Next generation of scientific instrumentation, tools and methods (2022)    

Conditions for the Call    

HORIZON-INFRA-2022-TECH-01-01: R&D for the next generation of scientific instrumentation, tools and methods    

DESTINATION – NETWORK CONNECTIVITY IN RESEARCH AND EDUCATION - ENABLING COLLABORATION WITHOUT BOUNDARIES (INFRANET)    

Call - Network connectivity in Research and Education - Enabling collaboration without boundaries (2021)    

Conditions for the Call    

HORIZON-INFRA-2021-NET-01-01-FPA: Framework Partnership Agreement (FPA) for Research and Education Networks    

Other Actions not subject to calls for proposals    

Grants to identified beneficiaries    

1. Conference on European Research Infrastructures: 20 years of ESFRI, achievements and future insights    

2. International Conference on Research Infrastructures – ICRI 2022    

Specific Grant Agreements to the FPA for Research and Education Networks    

1. SGA for networking and collaboration services and investments in long-term capacity for Research and Education Networks in Europe    

2. SGA for investments on International connectivity and collaboration    

Other grants awarded without a call for proposals    

1. FAIR and open data sharing in support to European preparedness for COVID-19 and other infectious diseases    

2. Research infrastructure services for rapid research responses to COVID-19 and other infectious disease epidemics    

Public procurement    

1. Delivering the EOSC core infrastructure and services    

Expert contract actions    

1. External expertise 2021    

2. External expertise 2022    

Budget    

Specific Features for Research Infrastructure    

Introduction

The overall objective of the Research Infrastructures Programme under Horizon Europe is to empower Europe through world-class and accessible research infrastructures, as part of an integrated European research and technology infrastructures landscape.

Research infrastructures (RIs) 1 , including the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), and technology infrastructures (TIs) are crucial enablers of research and technological innovation and drivers of multidisciplinary and data-intensive science.

Europe will benefit from an integrated, inter-operable and effective ecosystem of RIs and TIs that helps covering the continuum of needs from fundamental knowledge creation to technology deployment and supports the implementation of Open Science policies as well as European technology leadership.

Previous European Framework Programmes have made a significant contribution towards a more efficient, open and effective use of national research infrastructures and have developed, with the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI), a coherent and strategy-led approach to policy making and national investments on pan-European research infrastructures. The work with ESFRI triggered, so far, the development of 55 European research infrastructures, of which 37 have already been implemented, across all fields of science, mobilising close to €20 billion in investments 2 .

Twenty-one of these research infrastructures have been established as European Research Infrastructure Consortia (ERIC) – a legal form enshrined in EU law and the only EU regulation in the European Research Area (ERA) framework – that enables joint funding and integration of resources from Member States (MSs) and Associated Countries (ACs) and secures their commitment to continuing support. The EU, its MSs and the ACs invest together in the research infrastructures also through the Cohesion Policy, building research capacities at regional/national level with a view to deploy research results into markets.

Europe has a rich landscape of research infrastructures. For the future, smart investments will be required to drive the development of new research infrastructures to fill knowledge gaps, support emerging needs and scientific breakthroughs, and respond to new challenges, notably in the field of health and in the context of the green and digital transitions. At the same time, efforts to optimise and consolidate the existing capacities, avoiding fragmentation and unnecessary duplications, will provide the ERA with a more effective and interlinked and well-functioning research infrastructure landscape. Such RIs landscape and its continuous evolution and upgrade will make the ERA increasingly attractive for researchers and talents from all over the world. It is therefore necessary to foster synergies between RI funding instruments (European and national) to align R&I investments, ensure access to excellence and translate research results for the benefit of the society and the economy.

The recently published ESFRI White Paper also puts a new emphasis on the consolidation of a European research infrastructure ecosystem underpinning the ERA, on the role the existing facilities at European and national level can play to address the EU’s broad policy priorities and on the needs to integrate new research infrastructures in strategic areas to enhance R&I capacities in Europe. RIs, as highlighted in the ESFRI White Paper, have the potential to contribute to local and regional socio-economic development by triggering the creation of and playing a central role in knowledge innovation hubs. In this context, closely interacting with local businesses and industry, RIs support regional research priorities and the implementation of the Smart Specialization Strategies (S3), thus contributing to the alignment of priorities at EU level.

In the RI landscape, the EOSC offers a horizontal, pan-European, inter-operable, federated ecosystem of standards, technologies and services, along with rules of engagement, which will enable and enhance seamless access to and reliable re-use of research outputs, i.e. data, software and other digital objects, included those generated or collected by other research infrastructures, supporting the whole research data life-cycle from discovery and mining to analysis, storage and management. High-speed connectivity (GÉANT) underpins the development of EOSC and provides fast, trusted and reliable connectivity for researchers in Europe and beyond. Activities to deliver the EOSC as a trusted virtual environment supporting Open Science and data and service-driven research will be co-designed with MS/ACs and stakeholders in the framework of the proposed EOSC European partnership. This will allow Europe to seize data-intensive research and innovation opportunities and enable breakthroughs at the crossroads of different disciplines by a broad interdisciplinary user community. The deployment of an EOSC will be ensured through a platform based on a federated core, enabling access to a wider ecosystem of data and services, as well as use of integrated High-Performance Computing (HPC), Cloud, data, networks and Artificial Intelligence (AI) resources.

EU Framework Programmes have so far fostered the opening at EU level of RIs to trans-national users, enabling all researchers in Europe and beyond to have access to the best RIs they need for their research. These efforts have radically transformed the availability of state-of-the-art facilities for researchers, reinforcing Europe’s strong research performance and its ability to react rapidly, for example in providing reference materials worldwide to respond to the coronavirus outbreak. Up to now, this approach has been mainly science driven.

As European RIs have the potential to enhance society’s long term and consistent problem-solving capacity, new efforts are now needed to maintain Europe at the forefront of science and to ensure the provision of customised, multidisciplinary, impact-oriented and integrated RI services and resources to accelerate the transition towards a socially inclusive green and digital future and to support an effective and responsive health system as well as evidence-based policy-making. In this regard, Research Infrastructures can substantially contribute to the objectives of Horizon Europe clusters, missions and partnerships in Pillar II as well as to support its innovation dimension.

The Research Infrastructures work programme under Horizon Europe will address the global environmental, social and economic challenges, in line with the renewed ERA, which requires an explicit contribution of research and technology infrastructures to Europe’s wider policy objectives, thus maximizing the contribution of science and technology to the needs of the society and increasing Europe’s competitiveness.

To cope with new challenges and ensure leadership of Europe in frontier research, RIs need to be maintained at the forefront of science and technological developments. To this extent, the Research Infrastructures work programme will support the development of innovative cutting-edge scientific instrumentation, software and methods. These developments, carried out in cooperation and co-creation with industry, will advance the industrial technological level in Europe and lead to breakthrough technological and societal innovation.

Training for RI users, as well as strengthening the RI scientific, technical and managerial competencies of staff, will underpin all the activities implemented under the Research Infrastructures work programme, thus contributing to the education and employment opportunities of the next generation of researchers, technologists and high level science managers. A well-functioning RIs landscape and its continuous evolution and upgrade will make the ERA attractive for researchers and talents from all over the world.

The Research Infrastructures work programme is structured around the following five destinations:

1.Destination - Developing, consolidating and optimising the European research infrastructures landscape, maintaining global leadership (INFRADEV), to contribute to a strong, excellent and impactful European Research Area, by reinforcing RI capacities in Europe, their role at the global level and the policy-making in this field;

2.Destination - Enabling an operational, open and FAIR EOSC ecosystem (INFRAEOSC), aiming at delivering a “Web of FAIR Data and Services” for Science: a trusted virtual environment supporting Open Science, based on key horizontal core functions, with their corresponding e-infrastructures, and service layers accessible to researchers across disciplines throughout Europe;

3.Destination - RI services to support health research, accelerate the green and digital transformation, and advance frontier knowledge (INFRASERV), with a focus on the provision of integrated RI services to enable R&I addressing major societal challenges, notably in health, in support of the green and digital transformation and ensuring resilience to crises as well as to support curiosity-driven research and advancement of frontier knowledge in broad scientific domains;

4.Destination - Next generation of scientific instrumentation, tools and methods and advanced digital solutions (INFRATECH), to enable new discoveries and keep Europe’s RIs at the highest level of excellence, while paving the way to innovative solutions to societal challenges and new industrial applications, products and services;

5.Destination - Network connectivity in Research and Education – Enabling collaboration without boundaries (INFRANET), providing high-bandwidth networks and network services to interconnect researchers, data and computing resources in a non-discriminatory way regardless of the location of the users and the resources to allow scientists to conduct excellent research.

Horizon Europe is the research and innovation support programme in a system of European and national funding programmes that shares policy objectives. Applicants should consider and actively seek synergies with, and where appropriate possibilities for further funding from, other R&I-relevant EU, national or regional programmes (such as ERDF 3 , ESF+ 4 , JTF 5 , EMFF 6 , EAFRD 7 and InvestEU 8 ), where appropriate, as well as private funds or financial instruments. The ERDF focuses amongst others on the development and strengthening of regional and local research and innovation ecosystems and smart economic transformation, in line with regional/national smart specialisation strategies. It can support building research and innovation capacities and uptake of advanced technologies and roll-out of innovative solutions from the Framework Programmes for research and innovation through the ERDF.

DESTINATION – DEVELOPING, CONSOLIDATING AND OPTIMISING THE EUROPEAN RESEARCH INFRASTRUCTURES LANDSCAPE, MAINTAINING GLOBAL LEADERSHIP (INFRADEV)

Over recent years, the European Commission, Member States (MS) and Associated Countries (AC) have been closely collaborating, in particular within the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI), to develop an integrated and efficient ecosystem of research infrastructures (RIs) in Europe, which encompasses single-sited facilities, distributed facilities integrating resources across the European Research Area, as well as networks of national facilities and which serves researchers and engineers in all S&T fields, from basic to applied research. To facilitate integration and pooling of resources for the development of new capacities, a legal instrument has also been developed at European level, the European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC) that provides favourable conditions for the establishment and operation of large European infrastructures supported jointly by several MSs and ACs as well as by third countries. While Member States remain central in the development and financing of public RIs, the Union and ESFRI play a catalysing and leveraging role in driving the integration between national efforts.

The challenges for the near future are to consolidate and optimise the European Research Infrastructure landscape and enhance its capacity to support frontier research and address the emerging and new scientific and societal objectives associated with the transition towards a sustainable and resilient Europe. In addition, there is the need to define and implement an effective and sound RI strategy in Europe, in close cooperation with ESFRI, MSs and ACs, which is complemented by and interlocks with the long-term ambition of creating an integrated Technology Infrastructure (TI) landscape, the latter is supported in Pillar II of Horizon Europe Programme (HE). Such a strategy would also help in exploiting synergies between RI and TI financed from Horizon and massive investments in infrastructures from ERDF.

This destination aims to create a world-leading coherent, agile and attractive RI landscape in Europe, by reducing its fragmentation at European, national and regional level, ensuring coordination of efforts and fostering alignment of priorities among MSs and ACs, connecting RIs to the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), and which is able to support national and regional R&I ecosystems. The support to a European strategy for Research Infrastructures as well as activities to enhance the role of RIs for international cooperation and science diplomacy will also be covered under this destination.

Expected impact

Proposals for topics under this destination should set out a credible pathway to contributing to one or several of the following impacts:

1.Disruptive research and breakthrough science and innovation through cutting-edge, interconnected and sustainable Research Infrastructures;

2.Strengthened scientific excellence and performance and efficiency of the European Research Area, increasing its attractiveness to researchers from all over the world;

3.Coordinated research infrastructure capacity among countries and regions, also by exploiting possibilities given by the smart specialisation processes;

4.Reinforced R&I capacities enabling systemic changes needed for a truly transformative societal and economic recovery and a strengthened resilience of critical sectors, as outlined in the Recovery Plan;

5.Improved European response, in cooperation with international players, to emerging socio-economic and related scientific and technological challenges at global level.

The following call(s) in this work programme contribute to this destination:

Call - Developing, consolidating and optimising the European research infrastructures landscape, maintaining global leadership (2021)

HORIZON-INFRA-2021-DEV-01

Conditions for the Call

Indicative budget(s) 9

Proposals are invited against the following topic(s):

HORIZON-INFRA-2021-DEV-01-01: Support to the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures

Expected Outcome: Project results are expected to contribute to all the following expected outcomes:

1.enhanced efficiency, impact and visibility of ESFRI strategy and actions;

2.better structured and strengthened European research infrastructure ecosystem;

3.reinforced global competitiveness of the European Research Area;

4.coordination and alignment of EU and national priorities for RIs.

Scope: The European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) brings together policy makers, funding bodies and the scientific community to identify joint investment priorities for pan-European research infrastructures as well as foster their implementation, sustainability and impact. A comprehensive and efficient support structure is essential for the effective execution of ESFRI tasks and activities.

In this respect, proposals should support ESFRI in carrying out the following activities:

1.development and publishing of the ESFRI Roadmap;

2.development and execution of the ESFRI communication and outreach strategy, including organisation of ESFRI-led conferences and outreach events;

3.strengthen ESFRI analytical capacity, including through the use of external expertise in support of ESFRI policy and the ESFRI Roadmap processes;

4.effective evaluation and monitoring of research infrastructures on the ESFRI Roadmap through appropriate ICT and analytical tools;

5.fostering cooperation, exchange of experiences and good practices between the research infrastructures, their managers and stakeholders, as well as the funding bodies, including managing authorities of Cohesion policy programmes and policy makers;

6.ensuring cooperation of ESFRI with the EOSC as well as with any other relevant bodies and stakeholders at European or international level.

HORIZON-INFRA-2021-DEV-01-02: Strengthen the bilateral cooperation on research infrastructures with Africa: improving the knowledge base on climate change in Africa

Expected Outcome: Project results are expected to contribute to all the following expected outcomes:

1.contribution to the new Commission strategy with Africa, notably to the following specific objectives: maximise the benefits of the green transition and minimise threats to the environment in full compliance with the Paris Agreement; rapidly enhance learning, knowledge and skills, research and innovation capacities (with attention to female and young researchers);

2.enhanced research capacities in Africa for climate change observation;

3.enhanced Euro-African cooperation in R&I on measurements for climate change observation.

Scope: This topic aims at fostering EU-Africa cooperation to enhance climate (including Green House Gas and Short Lived Climate Forcers – GHG and SLCF) observation capacity across Africa. EU-Africa cooperation in the field of GHG observation will also include sharing of good practices and experiences to facilitate the development of a strategic approach for structuring R&I capacities at pan-African level. Particular attention should be given to tropical and sub-tropical Africa, which are currently the least covered regions in terms of climate observation. The participation of African partners is mandatory.

Proposals should address all following aspects:

1.establish a concept for a Pan-African climate observation RI including the underlying data infrastructure and the related digital transformation;; attention should be paid to open and FAIR principles in data management policies.

2.support the exchange of staff between several African countries and European research infrastructures to create expertise for the design, the governance and the operation of an integrated Pan-African RI for climate observation;

Proposals should build on existing cooperation activities between African and European countries and take into account the outcomes of previous and ongoing initiatives. The potential contribution to the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) should be taken into account.

Proposals are encouraged to take advantage of Copernicus 11 , its Data and Information Access Services (DIAS), the Integrated Carbon Observation System (ICOS) infrastructure, the European Commission Atmospheric Observatory for Greenhouse Gases 12 of the Joint Research Centre (JRC), as well as of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) observation systems and networks 13 , or other existing data access solutions to optimise use of resources.

HORIZON-INFRA-2021-DEV-01-03: Transition to digital/remote research infrastructure service provision: lessons learnt, needs and best practices

Expected Outcome: Project results are expected to contribute to all the following expected outcomes:

1.increased resilience of research infrastructures during crisis;

2.reduced ecological footprint of research infrastructure activities;

3.wider access to research infrastructures and enlargement of their user base;

Scope: The provision of digital and remote research infrastructure services has proved its effectiveness during the COVID-19 emergency/lockdown. Such an approach would also contribute to a sustainable and effective ecosystem of research infrastructures, and, more in general, to a more sustainable society.

Building on the resilience strategies and approaches developed during the COVID-19 emergency by research infrastructures in Europe, proposals under this topic should adopt a broad approach, covering a wide range of different research infrastructures in many fields and address the following aspects:

1.investigate good practices, strategies and lessons learned as well as needs, risks and threats and further technological developments necessary to support the transition to digital/remote research infrastructure service provision;

2.identify solutions, technologies and software enabling secure remote control of instrumentation and measurement as well as strategies for providing support to remote users;

3.develop guidelines to foster the transition to a digital/remote provision of research infrastructure services.

HORIZON-INFRA-2021-DEV-01-04: Support to National Contact Points (NCPs) for Research Infrastructures

Expected Outcome: Project results are expected to contribute to all the following expected outcomes:

1.improved professionalisation/skills of NCPs across Europe, helping to simplify access to Horizon Europe calls, lowering the entry barriers for newcomers, and raising the average quality of proposals submitted;

2.harmonised and improved trans-national cooperation between NCPs;

3.increased awareness across the research communities about the opportunities for access to research infrastructures offered by the Horizon Europe;

4.strengthen the links between research infrastructures and smart specialisation strategies;

5.seek complementarities between ERDF funded research infrastructures and research infrastructures funded under the Framework Programme.

Scope: Proposals should aim to facilitate trans-national co-operation between National Contact Points (NCPs) with a view to identifying and sharing good practices and raising the general standard of support to programme applicants.

Proposals should address issues specific to research infrastructures, such as the promotion of trans-national and virtual access opportunities, including specific activities targeting widening countries, and the awareness of the access provision rules. Cooperation with other policy and international cooperation oriented measures for research infrastructures (such as financed by ERDF) and synergies with other NCPs networks is encouraged. Proposals should build on the past experience and achievements gained in the Horizon 2020 grants.

The consortium should have a good representation of experienced and less experienced NCPs. Special attention should be given to enhancing the competence of NCPs, including helping less experienced NCPs rapidly acquire the know-how built up in other countries.

Proposals should cover the whole duration of Horizon Europe

HORIZON-INFRA-2021-DEV-01-05: Support to the e-Infrastructure Reflection Group (e-IRG)

Expected Outcome: Project results are expected to contribute to all the following outcomes:

1.cross-disciplinary and independent policy advice on digital matters related to EOSC and the digital transformation of the European Research Area;

2.a more inclusive e-Infrastructure ecosystem, well coordinated with the ESFRI thematic clusters;

3.improved coordination among National Open Science Clouds (NOSCs), National Research and Education Networks (NRENs), National HTC/Grid Infrastructures (NGIs) and all other national actors with national/pan-European links;

Scope: The e-Infrastructure Reflection Group (e-IRG) brings together representatives from policy makers, funding bodies and the scientific community from the Member States and Associated Countries to provide advice on policy-making towards inclusive, federated, user-driven and resilient e-Infrastructures and connected services.

Proposals should support e-IRG members in carrying out the following activities:

1.strengthen e-IRG analytical capacity, including through the use of external expertise in support of e-IRG policy documents;

2.developing and publishing policy papers, providing complementary advice and recommendations in the development of the e-Infrastructure area;

3.developing and implementing the e-IRG communication and outreach strategy, and disseminating the results throughout the European Research Area;

4.liaising with ESFRI to jointly underpin the interworking of e-Infrastructures with the ESFRI thematic clusters;

Following the setup of new constructs in the European landscape, notably the EOSC Association and the EOSC European Partnership, the e-IRG will conclude its work in the transitional period of 2021-2022 whereafter its expertise should assimilate to the relevant operational entities in Europe.

Call - Developing and consolidating the European research infrastructures landscape, maintaining global leadership (2021)

HORIZON-INFRA-2021-DEV-02

Conditions for the Call

Indicative budget(s) 14

Proposals are invited against the following topic(s):

HORIZON-INFRA-2021-DEV-02-01: Preparatory phase of new ESFRI research infrastructure projects

Expected Outcome: Project results are expected to contribute to several of the following expected outcomes:

1.structuring effect on ERA;

2.the scientific excellence of the European landscape of sustainable RI enhances problem-solving capacities to address challenges in science, industry and society;

3.solid ground for the decision making on new research infrastructures, is available to MS/ACs, their funding bodies and other relevant stakeholders (e.g.: international organisations, third countries; foundations; etc.);

4.long-term perspective for RI investments;

5.consistent and well-functioning European research infrastructures ecosystem through the development of synergies and complementarities between new and existing research infrastructures, including technology infrastructures and infrastructures financed by ERDF.

Scope: This topic supports the preparatory phase of new ESFRI research infrastructure projects identified in the 2021 update of the ESFRI Roadmap. These ESFRI projects have been selected for the excellence of their scientific case and for their strategic importance for the European Research Area and the structuring of the European research infrastructure ecosystem.

Proposal consortia should involve all the stakeholders necessary to move the project forward, to take the decisions, and to make financial commitments, before construction can start (including, but not limited to, national/regional ministries/governments, research councils or funding agencies from the countries that have already declared their commitment in the application to ESFRI). Operators of research facilities, research centres, universities, and industry may also be involved whenever appropriate.

Proposals for research infrastructure preparatory phases will tackle all key questions concerning legal, financial and technical issues leading to the establishment of a new research infrastructure and ensuring commitment of Member States/Associated Countries to their long-term operation and use in all fields of science.

In this respect, proposals should address all following aspects:

1.the development of legal and financial frameworks/plans relating to the setting-up, construction and/or integration of national resources, operation and decommissioning of the research infrastructure as well as its Governance structure; the complementarities between national and EU instruments (such as the European Structural and Investment Funds or the European Investment Bank) and/or innovative financing solutions (e.g.: pre-commercial procurement; public-private partnerships);

2.the preparation of legal and financial agreements, including site, governance, internal rules, financing of the new research infrastructures. These are deliverables that should be finalised before the end of the project (e.g.: through a Memorandum of Understanding; a 'signature-ready' document for the setting-up and the actual implementation of the research infrastructure);

3.the establishment of plans for logistics and human resources management, in relation to the construction/integration and future operation, including RI service provision as well as for an efficient data curation and preservation and for the provision of access to data collected or produced by the future infrastructure, in line with the FAIR principles;

4.the technical challenges concerning the joint development, transfer of knowledge and implementation of key RI technologies and the completion of the final technical design of the infrastructure;

5.the development of plans for the provision of RI services to identified scientific user communities;

6.the relevance of the RI for science and society, including its socio-economic impacts at local/regional level and links with the smart specialisation strategies at regional level.

Environmental (including climate-related) impacts as well as the optimisation of resource and energy use should be integrated in the Preparatory phase of new research infrastructures.

Proposals should explain any synergies and complementarities with previous or current EU grants.

HORIZON-INFRA-2021-DEV-02-02: Consolidation of the research infrastructure landscape – Individual support for ESFRI projects

Expected Outcome: Project results are expected to contribute to several of the following expected outcomes:

1.enhanced ERA excellence and attractiveness;

2.consistent and well-structured research infrastructures ecosystem in Europe;

3.solid Member States/Associated Country engagement in fully-fledged pan-European research infrastructures;

4.long-term perspective for investments in research infrastructures;

5.synergies and complementarities between new and existing research infrastructures, including technology infrastructures and infrastructures financed by ERDF.

Scope: This topic targets the research infrastructure projects retained in the 2016 ESFRI Roadmap, for the excellence of their scientific case and for their strategic importance for the European Research Area and the structuring of the European research infrastructure ecosystem.

The recent ESFRI Monitoring exercise carried out for the update of the ESFRI Roadmap 2021 assessed the overall progress towards implementation of these 2016 ESFRI projects and highlighted a number of key aspects that could hamper their implementation and start of the operation phase.

Although these ESFRI projects have received EU funding for their preparatory phase and initial commitment from Member States/Associated Countries, the early stages of the research infrastructure life-cycle are particularly challenging, also considering additional difficulties linked to the COVID-19 pandemic. These ESFRI projects may suffer from the transition to the Horizon Europe new framework programme and the possible lack of opportunities for supporting their development as fully-fledged pan-European research infrastructures. Proposals are expected to specifically address the bottlenecks identified in the ESFRI Monitoring report and in the Report 16 of the Commission High Level Expert Group, and allow these ESFRI projects to enter into the implementation phase. The extent to which these critical issues are addressed will be considered in evaluating proposals.

Based on the recommendations stemming from these monitoring exercises, support can be provided for activities, such as enlargement of the membership; establishment of the governance structure; securing the funding; finalisation of the distributed architecture; development of ICT and data management solutions (including possible open access to data); development of access policies and users’ strategies; consolidation of the international dimension; addressing staff and procurement related issues.

Proposal consortia should involve all stakeholders necessary to move the project forward and ensure financial commitments (including national/regional ministries/governments, research councils or funding agencies).

Proposals should explain any synergies and complementarities with previous or current EU grants. ESFRI projects currently benefitting from individual support under Horizon 2020 cannot apply to this topic.

Call - Developing the European research infrastructures landscape, maintaining global leadership (2022)

HORIZON-INFRA-2022-DEV-01

Conditions for the Call

Indicative budget(s) 17

Proposals are invited against the following topic(s):

HORIZON-INFRA-2022-DEV-01-01: Research infrastructure concept development

Expected Outcome: Projects are expected to contribute to all the following expected outcomes:

1.sound science cases for new research infrastructures, including expected scientific breakthrough, gap analysis and feasibility/design studies to support planning and decision making at the national level (e.g. funding bodies, governments) and at European level (e.g. ESFRI);

2.a better alignment of the development of the research infrastructure landscape with the advancement of excellent science and frontier research;

3.new services and access opportunities available to the research community, allowing to better tackle scientific and societal challenges.

Scope: This topic aims at supporting the development of new concepts for the next generation of research infrastructures of European interest 19 , single/multi sited, distributed or virtual, that none or few countries might individually be able to afford. All fields of research can be considered.

Major upgrades of existing infrastructures may also be considered if the end result is significantly transformative and equivalent to a new infrastructure concept.

Proposals for RI concept development will tackle all key questions concerning the technical and conceptual feasibility of new or upgraded fully fledged user facilities.

In this respect, proposals should address all following aspects:

1.demonstrate relevance in relation to ERA, including to the existing landscape, and the advancement with respect to the state-of-art of the new infrastructure;

2.highlight the research challenges the new research infrastructures will make possible to address, including at global level;

3.indicate the gaps in the research infrastructure landscape the new infrastructure will cover and the synergies with existing infrastructures at European and global level, including those co-financed from other EU instruments (e.g.: Cohesion policy);

4.indicate, when relevant, the potential impact of the new research infrastructure at regional level.

Proposals should also provide evidence that the project will effectively:

1.identify technologies and develop research infrastructure architecture (e.g. single site or distributed, …);

2.identify scientific user communities (and their related needs) that will benefit from access to RI services, including scientific data and instrumentation, and develop the planning of research services to users;

3.identify governance options and strategic approaches for institutional/stakeholders’ commitment and engagement;

4.develop initial financial plans for the RI construction (or major upgrades) and operation as well as preliminary ideas for long-term sustainability, including synergies with other funds and programmes (e.g.: ERDF);

5.develop plans for an efficient data curation and preservation and for the provision of access to data collected or produced by the future infrastructure, in line with the FAIR principles.

Proposals considering just a new component of a research infrastructure are not in scope of this topic.

When relevant, environmental (including climate-related) impacts as well as the optimisation of resource and energy use should be integrated in the concept development of new research infrastructures. In this topic the integration of the gender dimension (sex and gender analysis) in research and innovation content is not a mandatory requirement.

HORIZON-INFRA-2022-DEV-01-02: Cooperation, synergies and networking between research infrastructures and technology infrastructures

Expected Outcome: Project results are expected to contribute to the following expected outcomes:

1.strengthened collaboration between research infrastructures and technology infrastructures, leading to better identification and integration of services available to industrial users;

2.enhanced visibility and accessibility of research infrastructures and technology infrastructures for industry and SMEs;

3.better structured and strengthened European technology infrastructure landscape and its governance;

4.alignment and connection of research and technology infrastructure actions with other relevant actions in the European Research Area, in industrial policies, and other policies;

5.stronger synergies between public and private investment plans for technology infrastructures and for research infrastructures;

6.reinforced global competitiveness of the European Research Area.

Scope: Research infrastructures and technology infrastructures are among the key elements in the successful establishment of innovation ecosystems. Ranging from exploratory research facilities to testing, validation, and upscaling platforms, they enable technology development and innovation, providing SMEs and industry with the essential services that are needed to accelerate the entry into the market of innovative solutions supporting the twin green and digital transition and other socio-economic challenges. Research infrastructures and technology infrastructures provide important complementary activities in this respect. However, they are often developing services in isolation from each other, not fully taking into account the needs of industrial users along the entire innovation cycle.

Prior to the formulation of a specific European Research Area action 20 and the Council conclusion 21 mentioning the development of a European strategy on technology infrastructures, a Commission staff working document 22 took stock of existing, though un-coordinated, initiatives at regional, national and European level and identified key challenges that need to be addressed to create a well functioning technology infrastructures landscape.

The development of the research infrastructure landscape as well as access to research infrastructure services is significantly more advanced due to both the strategic priority setting process, through the Roadmap of the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures, and the significant effort at the EU level to open up national facilities and laboratories to international users. It is important to draw relevant lessons from these processes in order to further develop and implement the governance of technology infrastructures at European level.

In this respect, activities proposed should support policy development in the following main areas:

Mapping and prioritisation

1.Consolidation and integration of existing technology infrastructure mappings to increase visibility of technology infrastructures and facilitate gap analyses.

2.Gap analysis and prioritisation at EU and Member States' level towards high priority areas in synergy with the common industrial technology roadmaps, industrial alliances, partnerships, and industrial ecosystems under the EU industrial strategy.

3.Identification of good practices (with focus on services) to improve linkages and complementarity between research infrastructures and technology infrastructures in specific priority areas and ecosystems.

Operations and guidelines

1.Preparation of pilot strategic action plans for technology infrastructures in selected priority areas, for instance linked with the green and digital transition, in partnership with relevant actors and including options for their long-term sustainability, taking into account private and public investments and networking with relevant pan-European research infrastructures.

2.Development of an investment agenda for technology infrastructures taking into account private and public investments, as well as investments in relevant research infrastructures.

3.Development of guidelines and recommendations to help networks of technology infrastructures connecting with other existing research infrastructures and technology infrastructures to facilitate access and to integrate services for specific technology areas or industrial ecosystems.

Governance

1.Identification of best practices of the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures, in order to further develop and implement the governance of technology infrastructures at European level, adapted to their specificities (i.e. ecosystem and value chain approach, different stakeholders involved including industry, SMEs and research performing organisations).

2.Networking of relevant actors and infrastructures including for the identified priority areas.

3.Analysis of how technology infrastructures and research infrastructures could be better integrated in relevant existing frameworks and instruments, such as industrial technology roadmaps, Partnerships, Industrial Alliances, or IPCEIs.

Outreach and communication

1.Identification and liaising with relevant stakeholders related to research infrastructures and technology infrastructures in general, as well as to specific priority areas, and collecting stakeholder input through targeted surveys and workshops.

2.Development and execution of communication and outreach activities, including organisation of workshops and outreach events.

DESTINATION – ENABLING AN OPERATIONAL, OPEN AND FAIR EOSC ECOSYSTEM (INFRAEOSC)

The European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) is an ecosystem of research data and related services. It encompasses rules of engagement, standards, abstractions, technologies, and services, which will enable and enhance seamless access to and reliable re-use of FAIR 23 research outputs (i.e. data and other digital objects), including those generated or collected by other research infrastructures, and covering the whole research data life cycle from generation or discovery and mining to storage, processing, management, analysis, and re-use. The EOSC will contribute to the European Strategy for Data, including its thematic common interoperable data spaces, and the provision of secure and FAIR-enabling European cloud services.

EOSC development has been supported through a series of Horizon 2020 projects and an interim EOSC governance structure preparing the next stage of EOSC development for the period after 2020. These projects have contributed to the creation of a pan-European access mechanism; coordination of national activities for EOSC on-boarding; connection of European research infrastructures (e.g. ERIC and other world-class RIs) and existing e-infrastructures; initial development and operationalisation of the FAIR principles and a FAIR-compliant certification scheme for research data; the EOSC portal providing access to a range of services, guidelines and training; and the development and provision of a number of research-enabling value-added services, including distributed data processing and management (both public and commercial). From 2021, the EOSC partnership will help ensuring directionality (common vision and objectives) and additionality (complementary commitments and contributions) of the stakeholders involved.

Building on this progress, the INFRAEOSC destination aims to continue to develop the EOSC in a more cohesive and structured manner so that it becomes a fully operational enabling ecosystem for the whole research data lifecycle. This ecosystem includes FAIR research data commons (e.g. data, services, tools), based on key horizontal core functions, with corresponding e-infrastructures and service layers accessible to researchers across disciplines throughout Europe, leading to a “Web of FAIR Data and Services” for Science. The EOSC ecosystem will contribute a data space for science, research and innovation articulated with the other data spaces described in the European Strategy for Data.

Expected impact

Proposals for topics under this destination should set out a credible pathway to contributing to one or several of the following impacts:

1.Transforming the way researchers as well as the public and private sectors create, share and exploit research outputs (data, publications, protocols, methodologies, software, code, etc.) within and across research disciplines, leading to better quality, validation, more innovation and higher productivity of research;

2.Facilitating scientific multi-disciplinary cooperation, leading to discoveries in basic research and solutions in key application areas;

3.Seamless access to and management of increasing volumes of research data following FAIR principles (that are open as possible) and other research outputs stimulating the development and uptake of a wide range of new innovative and value-added services from public and commercial providers

4.Improving trust in science through increased FAIRness, openness and quality of scientific research in Europe, supported by more meaningful monitoring and better facilitators for reproducibility, validation and re-use of research results, and by improving pathways for the communication of science to the public.

All software developed under this destination should be open source, licensed under a CC0 public domain dedication or under an open source licence as recommended by the Free Software Foundation 24 and the Open Source Initiative 25 .

All projects that will be financed under this destination are expected to participate in concertation activities in the framework of the EOSC Partnership.

The following call(s) in this work programme contribute to this destination:

Call - Enabling an operational, open and FAIR EOSC ecosystem (2021)

HORIZON-INFRA-2021-EOSC-01

Conditions for the Call

Indicative budget(s) 26

Open Science practices and a digitally-skilled workforce

Proposals are invited against the following topic(s):

HORIZON-INFRA-2021-EOSC-01-01: Supporting an EOSC-ready digitally skilled workforce

Expected Outcome: Project results are expected to contribute to all the following expected outcomes:

1.availability of highly and appropriately skilled professionals enabling the practice of Open Science with adequate knowledge of standards, applications and tools and best practices for delivering, managing, re-using, sharing and analysing FAIR data, as well as other digital research objects;

2.researchers are able to transform the way they carry out research and exploit research outputs, leading to better quality and more productivity of research;

3.contribute to the Horizon Europe EOSC Partnership.

Scope: Development of new support material, curricula and learning pathways for researchers, data curators, and data stewards and new types of professionals. To ensure an efficient uptake and exploitation of data by Public Authorities (e.g. for evidence-based policy making), policy makers should also become skilled in data acquisition, management and analysis. Proposals should therefore cover the following activities:

1.Engage with the relevant stakeholders at national and institutional level in order to co-create, promote, broker and ensure the recognition of digital career profiles specifically related to Open Science. This includes the development of quality assurance mechanisms for professional training and qualifications.

2.Promote existing and develop new curricula (at undergraduate, PhD and professional level) that meet the demands of open and data-intensive science, and the establishment of advanced learning environments, in order to train the next generation of scientists, librarians and infrastructure professionals on topics such as the management and integration of diverse data flows and artificial intelligence for FAIR data management.

3.Foster the development of a distributed pan-European user support network, supporting the collaboration of existing networks of competence and data curation centres, in order to provide expertise on storing, sharing and reusing digital outputs, as well as on the onboarding of EOSC services and the provision of open science resources.

4.Support the development of a quality assurance and certification framework for learning material taking into account the life cycle of materials to ensure that training is up to date with technology and policy changes, as part of lifelong learning programmes.

5.Promote the training of civil servants, policy makers and agencies, as well as their engagement with researchers, in order to foster the efficient uptake of relevant scientific data by public administration and encourage its use for evidence-based policy making, building on best practices where appropriate 28 .

Proposals should take into account and collaborate with the resulting project/s from the topic H2020-INFRAEOSC-03-2020 29 and building on the results of the projects funded under the topic H2020-INFRAEOSC-05-2020 30 on training, earmarking the necessary resources to do so. In addition, similar collaboration should be envisaged with the resulting grant/s from the topic HORIZON-INFRA-2021-EOSC-01-05. They should establish synergies with national and regional programmes on digital skills and training as well as with other parts of Horizon Europe (e.g. Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, activities of EIT KICs 31 ) and other EU funding sources (e.g. Digital Europe Programme (DEP), Erasmus+), and policies (e.g. European Higher Education Area (EHEA)). They should be credible in that the necessary funds for hiring or continuing the employment of staff, such as “data curators and stewards” in universities and research performing institutions, have been ensured at institutional, regional or national level, as these funds are not to be provided by the Commission.

To ensure complementarity of outcomes, proposals are expected to cooperate and align with activities of the EOSC Partnership and to coordinate with relevant initiatives and projects contributing to the development of EOSC.

HORIZON-INFRA-2021-EOSC-01-02: Supporting the development and coordination of activities of the EOSC Partnership

Expected Outcome: Project results are expected to contribute to all the following expected outcomes:

1.EOSC has a consolidated and engaged community across the European Research Area with an increasing number of users and service providers able to offer and consume resources based on the EOSC rules of participation;

2.well-coordinated activities underpinned by a consistent monitoring framework contribute to the achievement of the EOSC Partnership objectives;

3.effective business models are defined to guarantee future sustainability and development of EOSC as a key element of open science;

4.facilitated access to information to and from all EOSC stakeholders across countries, institutions, networks and initiatives.

Scope: Support the development of an effective pan-European cooperation framework and a thriving EOSC ecosystem in which stakeholders from all parts of the European Research Area pull together in a strategic and coordinated manner to ensure the achievement of the EOSC Partnership objectives. Proposals should support the EOSC community at large by engaging and interacting with a large number of users and stakeholder communities, to monitor the uptake and (re)use of EOSC resources.

Proposals are expected to cover the following activities:

1.Further develop and update the Strategic Research and Innovation agenda (SRIA) for EOSC and corresponding detailed roadmaps in early consultation with the wider research community in Europe in full transparency and openness. The agenda should cover all aspects required for the development of the EOSC-Core, Minimum Viable EOSC and the future widening to the public and private sector as well as support the alignment of the contributions to EOSC at national, regional, institutional and scientific community level.

2.Facilitate an effective cooperation between and organise the concertation of EOSC-relevant projects, monitoring their results and ensuring that relevant outcomes are identified and serve as a baseline for future developments. Beyond EOSC-relevant projects, proposals should engage with the community through the organisation of a Stakeholders forum targeting research communities across disciplines and countries, including the ESFRI clusters, national and regional infrastructures and the long tail of science.

3.Based on the work already undertaken in the context of the EOSC Partnership and of the EOSC Landscape Working Group 32 , consolidate, continuously update and monitor EOSC key performance indicators (KPI's), investments and FAIR data production and management, in order to assess the success of EOSC and its implementation at the different levels (national, regional, institutional and scientific community). The monitoring activities should also consider the results of the European Research Data Landscape study launched by the European Commission 33 in order to provide a living picture of the research data ecosystem in Europe.

4.Develop a cooperation framework to implement the EOSC rules of participation.

5.Effectively cooperate and establish links with other selected Horizon Europe Partnerships as well as with other relevant initiatives, including sectoral data spaces. Participate and represent EOSC Partnership stakeholders in international cooperation activities to foster global Open Science commons avoiding any overlap with existing efforts by the communities.

6.Develop and test cost models and future business models for a lasting long-term sustainability framework, building on the work performed by the EOSC Sustainability Working Group 34 and the studies already conducted as well as on the findings in this area of EOSC related projects.

The selected project will be expected to align with the EOSC Partnership. Proposals should involve and be driven by one or more representatives of the relevant actors of the field, in particular those directly involved in the EOSC Partnership.

Supporting EOSC-Core: Enabling access to the Web of FAIR data and services

Proposals are invited against the following topic(s):

HORIZON-INFRA-2021-EOSC-01-03: Deploying EOSC-Core components for FAIR

Expected Outcome: Project results are expected to contribute to all the following expected outcomes:

1.European researchers can find, access and re-use an increasing amount of research outputs across borders and disciplines through state-of-the-art technologies underpinning discoverability and interoperability of research outputs;

2.contribute to the Horizon Europe EOSC Partnership.

Scope: Enable the enforcement and implementation of the EOSC Persistent Identifier (PID) policy 35 by developing tools, processes and additional infrastructure required to support use of PIDs to a maximal extent, for both the management and analysis of data, and also the publication, curation and tracking of research outputs. This should include a PID ‘meta resolver’ for EOSC or tools to support the alignment of PID infrastructure with the EOSC PID Policy. In addition, and building on community efforts on metadata and ontologies and on the work developed under topic HORIZON-INFRA-2021-EOSC-01-05, this topic aims at ensuring the adoption and use of coherent metadata frameworks and deploying a common dataset search to enhance discovery via EOSC. Proposals under this topic should also cover other research outputs, such as software, developing services based on open standards and common practices adopted by the different disciplines.

Proposals should address all of the following activities:

1.Contribute to the consolidation of an interoperable ecosystem of PID Infrastructures based on open specification and standards to support machine actionability and offer sufficient flexibility and capacity e.g. by developing a common PID ‘meta resolver’ and standardised interfaces and open protocols for exchanging information on PIDs to support the creation and use of a PID Graph 36 .

2.Develop EOSC PID services to address a wide variety of applications appropriate to community needs.

3.Develop schemas and APIs based on open specifications and metadata framework as well as related crosswalks for improved discovery and interoperability.

4.Develop and deploy a flexible and scalable federated search service across the EOSC repositories, exploiting the aforementioned building blocks (PIDs resolution, APIs and metadata schemas). Such service should ensure customisability of querying (e.g. interfaces, APIs and scripts) and, when possible, ranking of queries results according to FAIRness of data and other prioritisations responding to the users’ needs.

5.Develop services and tools to archive, reference, describe and cite research software, based on standards and common practices of the different disciplines.

6.Develop services that build on metadata registries, starting from those that support communities in the uptake of metadata schemas and crosswalks and facilitate their maintenance; services to validate data sources against metadata schemes and to monitor data sharing, notably across communities and disciplines, are also expected.

To ensure complementarity of outcomes, proposals are expected to cooperate and align with activities of the EOSC Partnership and to coordinate with relevant initiatives and projects contributing to the development of EOSC. In particular, projects should take into account and coordinate the technical work with the ongoing grants under topic HORIZON-INFRA-2021-EOSC-01-05, earmarking the necessary resources to do so. They should build on the EOSC PID policy from the PID Task force of the EB Architecture WG 37 and FAIR WG 38 and should coordinate with the awarded grants under the topic H2020-INFRAEOSC-03-2020 39 and the future procurement activity under Other Actions 40 . In this topic the integration of the gender dimension (sex and gender analysis) in research and innovation content is not a mandatory requirement.

HORIZON-INFRA-2021-EOSC-01-04: Innovative and customizable services for EOSC

Expected Outcome: Project results are expected to contribute to all the following expected outcomes:

1.increased service offer and capabilities beyond the present landscape in addressing the current and anticipated needs of the research community at large;

2.increased availability of (pre)operational services that can be customised and integrated in the existing workflows of researchers across different disciplines, facilitating the cross-disciplinary collaboration, reducing the time to results and increasing productivity.

Scope: The aim is to provide researchers with a set of highly innovative new services that would exploit, in a structural way, cloud-based EOSC technologies and European compute and data management capacities.

Proposals should cover the following activities:

1.Development and improvement of existing pre-operational software, tools and open source services, aiming to be integrated to the service-based architecture offered through the EOSC;

2.Iterative and inclusive development in close cooperation/co-design with the relevant user communities;

3.Improving the TRL of the components and adding new features based on requirements from research communities, use of open source software and tools for wide availability and uptake;

The application range of these services for data intensive science is wide (e.g. automated extraction of information from scientific literature, experimentation, optimising experimental design, collection and analysis of heterogeneous and/or large-scale data, validation of data quality, repeatability and reproducibility in science, discovery and on-demand provisioning of open science resources and their reuse; storing, sharing and reusing research data, enabling secure data use and transactions, workflow management) making use of various enabling technologies, e.g. artificial intelligence and machine learning, natural language processing, automation, simulation, big data analytics or blockchain.

To be robust, customizable and scalable, all developments should be tested against 2-3 real life use cases from a variety of scientific domains. The projects should cooperate with other relevant and related projects and e-Infrastructures and large user communities. Joint use cases and testing across individual project boundaries are encouraged.

The services should be integrated in the EOSC core service platform 41 and proposals should include sufficient provisions to address the integration, including, appropriate IPR and licence agreements. The resources that the services will offer should be clearly identified in the proposals. The sustainability model for the long-term availability of services can rely on EOSC. Participation of industry players, including SMEs, is recommended for both the development and further exploitation of the project results.

In this topic the integration of the gender dimension (sex and gender analysis) in research and innovation content is not a mandatory requirement.

Building with the scientific community a Web of FAIR data for open science

Proposals are invited against the following topic(s):

HORIZON-INFRA-2021-EOSC-01-05: Enabling discovery and interoperability of federated research objects across scientific communities

Expected Outcome:  

Project results are expected to contribute to all the following expected outcomes:

1.improved findability, accessibility, interoperability and re-usability (“FAIRness”) of data and other research outputs by coordinating the implementation of frameworks and the alignment of FAIR data practices on metadata, persistent identifiers, etc.;

2.wide uptake of and compliance with FAIR data principles and practices by national and European research data and metadata providers and repositories, leading to the development of the Web of FAIR data and related services;

3.contribute to the Horizon Europe EOSC Partnership.

Scope: Align and support the development and implementation of common EOSC methodologies, open standards and frameworks to ensure wide uptake and coherent implementation of the FAIR principles, to support the FAIRness of the research digital objects made accessible through EOSC.

Proposals should cover all of the following areas and activities:

a) Persistent identifiers:

1.Support the creation of a coordination mechanism of EOSC PID Service Providers to respond to the needs of research and Open Science, in a way that ensures sustainability, continuity of services and innovation.

2.Promote the alignment of PID infrastructures in line with the EOSC PID Policy.

3.Support the continuous standardisation of resource types and promotion of new practices to expand the range of identifiable objects e.g. instruments, services, organisations and software.

b) Metadata and ontologies:

1.Support the development of governance structures at discipline level for coordinating the work on metadata and ontologies and ensure overall coordination within EOSC.

2.Develop EOSC guidelines for a minimum metadata description for data discovery and metadata exchange, based on existing or emerging metadata schemas and tools.

3.Develop EOSC guidelines for common standards to archive, run, reference, describe and cite research software.

4.Collect information about existing metadata schemas, ontologies, crosswalks, and tools for metadata management and disseminate best practices amongst EOSC-relevant repository operators.

5.Support all research communities to develop and adopt disciplinary standards, to generate clear and precise definitions for the terms they use, and to consolidate common metadata and data schemata for use in the EOSC context. Provide support to make these definitions publicly available and referenceable by persistent identifiers for machine actionability.

6.In carrying out the previous actions, proposals should take into account, and build collaboratively on, existing actions by established initiatives and organisations.

c) Metrics, certification and guidelines for FAIR:

1.Support research communities to implement existing or emerging metrics and make use of the FAIR data maturity model 42 to develop assessment methods or to assess FAIR digital objects and iterate based on testing. Building on previous and current developments, for instance, by the ESFRI clusters, proposals should engage with new communities to accelerate the uptake of these best practices broadly.

2.Translate FAIR guidelines and frameworks to make them applicable to other digital objects, such as software, code, data management plans, protocols, etc.

d) Interoperability:

1.Agree and implement a common set of rules to ensure data and services within EOSC support interoperability.

2.Promoting the use of already existing common technical specifications, standards or infrastructure, endorsed by the various scientific communities.

3.Foster alignments with existing frameworks and standards from non-scientific large data sources of interest for research and, where appropriate, promote in such context the implementation of the FAIR principles as means to improve interoperability.

The research communities can be additionally supported through financial support to third parties in the form of grants to carry out or contribute to some of the actions under the areas and activities listed above.

To ensure complementarity of outcomes, proposals are expected to cooperate and align with activities of the EOSC Partnership and to coordinate with relevant initiatives and projects contributing to the development of EOSC. In particular, proposals should build on the work developed by the FAIRsFAIR project 43 and by the FAIR Working Group 44 of the EOSC Executive Board. In addition, they should map and incorporate all relevant outputs, services and results produced by the ESFRI Cluster projects, e-Infrastructures and the national initiatives in the above mentioned areas, as well as establish the necessary coordination and bidirectional feedback mechanism with the projects resulting from the Horizon Europe topics HORIZON-INFRA-2021-EOSC-01-06, HORIZON-INFRA-2022-EOSC-01-03 and the Other action "FAIR and open data sharing in support of European preparedness for COVID-19 and other infectious diseases" under this Work Programme, that will incorporate FAIR to challenge driven use cases. In addition, this topic should aim to develop concrete proposals for the cross-linking of EOSC with the other envisioned European data spaces foreseen in the European strategy for data (COM/20202/66 final). Finally, projects will need to be flexible in order to take into account and coordinate the technical work with the ongoing grant/s under topic HORIZON-INFRA-2021-EOSC-01-03, earmarking the necessary resources to do so.

HORIZON-INFRA-2021-EOSC-01-06: FAIR and open data sharing in support of cancer research

Expected Outcome: Project results are expected to contribute to all the following expected outcomes:

1.researchers, healthcare professionals, cancer patients and survivors contributing to cancer research regularly interact with EOSC to store, share, access, analyse and process research data and other research digital objects from their own discipline, across disciplines and national borders;

2.open and FAIR data are the new norm for research conducted under this mission area;

3.EU-wide sharing of research data relevant to this area is shown to be a critical mechanism to facilitate cancer research across Member States and Associated Countries;

4.contribute to guaranteeing safety of patients’ data while at the same time contributing to research advancement. Engaging with patients/survivors in the sharing, access and use of data;

5.EOSC grows into a trusted research and innovation data space and service platform in Europe that supports the interdisciplinary community involved in this mission area;

6.contribute to the Horizon Europe EOSC Partnership and other relevant partnerships related to cancer research.

Scope: Reuse of research, clinical, epidemiological and socio-economic data within and across disciplines and borders require openness, infrastructure capacity, better handling, careful management, machine actionability and seamless access to services all along the data life cycle. The Horizon Europe mission areas recognise upfront that providing access to data, knowledge and digital services through federated infrastructures is a key enabling condition for success. In addition, European Partnerships tackling complex societal challenges through multi-disciplinary approaches are facing important challenges in the European R&I systems, including poor data interoperability. In recent years, different scientific communities have started developing ‘thematic clouds’ or ‘data spaces’ within their domain of research and innovation. The EOSC provides the enabling framework to share, connect and upscale best practices and services by the communities to implement FAIR principles for (open, when possible) data sharing and management. The development of this framework is advancing rapidly as EOSC enters its second phase of implementation. Access to an initial EOSC federation of research infrastructures and their services is being consolidated and concepts such as FAIR data management and FAIR-by-design digital research outputs (data, publications, software, code, protocols, etc.) become more prominent.

The overall objective of this topic is to accelerate research and innovation under this mission area through better access, management, interoperability and reuse of digital information, to be achieved by using and integrating EOSC resources ranging from EOSC federated infrastructures, services and data to guidelines, best practices, tools and metrics for the management of FAIR and open data. This should be achieved through cross-domain, strategic use cases of direct relevance to the mission areas and the European Partnerships supporting this mission area on cancer.

The use cases should demonstrate the value of sharing FAIR and open research data, help to establish data sharing and management practices within the involved communities and across the Member States and Associated Countries, leveraging European research infrastructures and e-infrastructures. The use cases should provide feedback to the EOSC Partnership on the desired future evolution of EOSC. Special attention shall be put on aspects of data harmonisation, integration of data collection, data quality assurance, data privacy and security, big-data analysis and machine learning methods, as well as on the socio-economic dimension of the use case. Proposals should also foster the creation of user environments that researchers in this field can then use in order to seamlessly interact with digital information in the framework of the EOSC ecosystem.

Proposals should provide for activities to collaborate with relevant European Partnerships. Synergies with Horizon Europe Cluster 1 activities and other relevant initiatives, including actions stemming from Cohesion policy programmes are welcome. The activities should contribute to the consolidation of a European Health Data Space which is well articulated with the EOSC. They should build on results of relevant Horizon 2020 projects, including those providing pilots/models for linking clinical data and samples to cancer research, on initiatives for cancer such as the European Cancer Information System with the European Network of Cancer Registries, the European Reference Networks, the Innovative Partnership for Action Against Cancer (iPAAC) Joint Action and on the lessons learned from the ongoing European COVID-19 Data Platform, the EU Platform for Rare Diseases’ Registration and other initiatives in other disease areas. Proposers should consider already established ESFRI research infrastructures and efforts by relevant ESFRI cluster projects.

To ensure complementarity of outcomes, proposals are expected to cooperate and align with activities of the EOSC Partnership and to coordinate with relevant initiatives and projects contributing to the development of EOSC. In particular, in areas such as data interoperability, metadata and vocabularies, the use of persistent identifiers or Authentication and Authorisation Infrastructure (AAI), proposals should coordinate and establish a feedback mechanism with the awarded proposal/s from the topic HORIZON-INFRA-2021-EOSC-01-05 in order to ensure alignment with EOSC policies and to identify common useful tools and resources as well as relevant data repositories that comply with EOSC guidelines. Proposals are also expected to engage and/or align where appropriate with projects funded under the Other action "FAIR and open data sharing in support of European preparedness for COVID-19 and other infectious diseases" in this Work Programme, for a synergetic development of the area of Health within EOSC.

Grants awarded under this topic should also cooperate with the actions awarded under topic HORIZON-INFRA-2021-SERV-01-01 to identify and better exploit related synergies, share results and to avoid overlaps. To this extent, proposals should provide for dedicated activities and earmark appropriate resources.

Call - Enabling an operational, open and FAIR EOSC ecosystem (2022)

HORIZON-INFRA-2022-EOSC-01

Conditions for the Call

Indicative budget(s) 45

Open Science practices and a digitally-skilled workforce

Proposals are invited against the following topic(s):

HORIZON-INFRA-2022-EOSC-01-01: Services and tools to underpin a research assessment system that incentivises open science practices

Expected Outcome: Project results are expected to contribute to all the following expected outcomes:

1.enable a rewards and recognition system based on a new generation of (qualitative or quantitative) metrics and indicators 47 , leading to a culture and system change that increases the quality and impact, the creativity and the transparency of and trust in science;

2.establish a system of qualitative information based on community-led curation and annotations of research outcomes that feeds into a revamped rewards and recognition system;

3.contribute to the Horizon Europe EOSC Partnership.

Scope: A coherent corpus of reports and recommendations 48 shows a broad consensus among researchers and policy makers that changes in the evaluation of research and researchers’ performance are necessary in order to incentivise higher quality research, collaboration and open science practices.

This topic supports the development of EOSC-federated services and tools that allow the gathering and monitoring of information and data on the use and uptake of research outputs and of open science practices across borders and disciplines. Such tools and services are essential to collect the information to be used for next generation metrics 49 , together with qualitative indicators, in an assessment system that valorises open science.

Services and tools should collect data on the different usages of research outputs such as data sets, models, software, etc., on the usage of EOSC services, research infrastructures, data platforms, etc., and on open science practices such as those identified in the context of the Open Science Policy Platform registry of pilots and implementations of responsible metrics 50 and the RDA Interest Group on Open Science Graphs for FAIR Data 51 .

Proposals should also aim to promote the adoption of community-led curation and annotation systems to foster qualitative aspects of a new generation research assessment system. Related services should be developed, considering for example FAIRness evaluation and the use of machine learning algorithms and AI, to provide qualitative information that will enrich the meta-information of all research outputs.

The tools and services may support research-performing and/or research-funding organisations in measuring the usage, relevance, quality and impact of research outputs, research infrastructures and open science practices, thereby providing the necessary data and information for next-generation metrics and indicators for the implementation of a new research assessment system.

In developing the services and the tools, it is important to integrate a level of flexibility that allows research-performing and research-funding organisations to set their own recruitment and evaluation policies, respecting also the differences among scientific disciplines, taking into account the specificities of the different career stages and allowing for diversity in practices.

Proposals should take into account existing services, tools and infrastructures in order not to duplicate efforts, e.g. on data collection, on discipline based metadata schemas, on AAI and on Persistent Identifiers developed by projects resulting from the topic HORIZON-INFRA-2021-EOSC-01-03.

To ensure complementarity of outcomes, proposals are expected to cooperate and align with activities of the EOSC Partnership and to coordinate with relevant initiatives and projects contributing to the development of EOSC.

In this topic the integration of the gender dimension (sex and gender analysis) in research and innovation content is not a mandatory requirement.

HORIZON-INFRA-2022-EOSC-01-02: Improving and coordinating technical infrastructure for institutional open access publishing across Europe

Expected Outcome: Project results are expected to contribute to all the following expected outcomes:

1.a robust pan-European network of infrastructures, with all necessary relevant service-provision, that brings together already existing not-for-profit and no APC 52 -based (‘diamond’) open access publishing initiatives in order to become an integral part of EOSC – in particular through effective support to the FAIR principles and sharing common technical infrastructure standards;

2.a comprehensive toolbox to implement common standards for technical infrastructure and service provision available in open source repositories and adopted within the network and beyond;

3.interoperable data exchange and crosslinking among the network and with FAIR-compliant data repositories and other open access infrastructures already used by the research community in order to foster the concept of ”single-point of access to services and content”;

4.contribute to the Horizon Europe EOSC Partnership.

Scope: This topic is addressed to not-for-profit institutions (such as universities, research centres, funders and other institutions supporting research and the dissemination of research outputs within national remits, e.g. national libraries) that run open access publishing initiatives for the public interest (non-commercial), in particular, publishing activities of journals and/or publishing platforms, and which do not levy article processing charges (APCs). Recent years have witnessed a sharp increase in open access publishing activities. Alongside commercial publishers who are in the business for publishing for profit, technology advances have enabled research-performing and other related organisations working for research to develop scholarly publishing infrastructures and services in the new digital environment, either continuing existing activities in print or in an entirely digitally-born environment. Such open access services operate in most European countries, in some cases with a national remit.

This topic aims to improve efficiency, coordination and technological alignment among the network of institutional open access publishing infrastructures and to develop and provide the technical specifications to ensure interoperability, interconnection and improved quality of services to researchers. Proposals shall build on already existing and operational publishing services across Europe and embed the open access publishing network into the EOSC ecosystem.

Proposals should cover each of the following activities:

1.improve the understanding of technologies and services in such institutional not-for profit services across Europe and provide recommendations for further alignment and interoperability;

2.coordinate the development and adoption of common technical solutions for interoperability, cross-referencing, cross-linking, and sharing metadata across the European Research Area and beyond;

3.support the implementation of technical specifications required to provide services through the EOSC, and the adoption of the essential solutions and standards (e.g. APIs, PIDs, metadata frameworks, ontologies, AAI etc.) to improve findability, accessibility, interoperability and re-usability of digital objects within the network of publishing infrastructures and in the EOSC federation.

Projects under this topic should liaise with Horizon Europe funded initiatives in the Work Programme Widening participation and strengthening the European Research Area which address the non-technological aspects of institutional publishing under topics HORIZON-WIDERA-2021-ERA-01-43: Capacity-building for institutional open access publishing across Europe and HORIZON-WIDERA-2022-ERA-01-42: Supporting the development of aligned policies for open access books and monographs.

To ensure complementarity of outcomes, proposals are expected to cooperate and align with activities of the EOSC Partnership and to coordinate with relevant initiatives and projects contributing to the development of EOSC.

In this topic the integration of the gender dimension (sex and gender analysis) in research and innovation content is not a mandatory requirement.

Building with the scientific community a Web of FAIR data for open science

Proposals are invited against the following topic(s):

HORIZON-INFRA-2022-EOSC-01-03: FAIR and open data sharing in support of healthy oceans, seas, coastal and inland waters

Expected Outcome: Project results are expected to contribute to all the following expected outcomes:

1.seamless interactions between EOSC, operational dataspaces or environments (e.g. EMODnet, Copernicus Marine Service, Global Ocean Observation System (GOOS), etc.), researchers and other stakeholders contributing to restoring healthy oceans, seas, coastal and inland waters to store, share, access, analyse and process research data and other research digital objects from their own discipline, across research infrastructures, disciplines and national borders;

2.open and FAIR data is the new norm for research contributing to restoring healthy oceans, seas, coastal and inland waters;

3.EU-wide sharing of research data relevant to this area is shown to be a critical mechanism to facilitate ocean and water restoration across Member States and Associated Countries;

4.EOSC grows into a trusted research and innovation data space and service platform in Europe that supports the interdisciplinary research community involved in this mission area;

5.contribute to the Horizon Europe EOSC Partnership and other relevant partnerships related to restoring healthy oceans, seas, coastal and inland waters.

Scope: Reuse of research data within and across disciplines and borders require openness, infrastructure capacity, better handling, careful management, machine actionability and seamless access to services all along the data life cycle. The Horizon Europe mission areas recognise upfront that providing access to data, knowledge and digital services through federated infrastructures is a key enabling condition for success. In addition, European Partnerships tackling complex societal challenges through multi-disciplinary approaches are facing important challenges in the European R&I systems, including poor data interoperability. In recent years, different scientific communities have started developing ‘thematic clouds’ or ‘data spaces’ within their domain of research and innovation. The EOSC provides the enabling framework to share, connect and upscale best practices and services by the communities to implement FAIR principles for (open, where possible) data sharing and management. The development of this framework is advancing rapidly as EOSC enters its second phase of implementation. Access to an initial EOSC federation of research infrastructures and their services is being consolidated and concepts such as FAIR data management and FAIR-by-design digital research outputs (data, publications, software, code, protocols, etc.) become more prominent.

The overall objective of this topic is to accelerate research and innovation under this mission area through better access, management, interoperability, reuse and citation of digital information, to be achieved by using and integrating EOSC resources ranging from EOSC federated infrastructures, services and data to guidelines, best practices, tools and metrics for the management of FAIR and open data, and to extend these resources to the relevant marine and maritime domains that are less familiar with EOSC.

This should be achieved through cross-domain, strategic use cases of direct relevance to the Digital Twin of the Ocean 53 , the mission areas and the European Partnerships supporting this mission area on healthy oceans, seas, coastal and inland waters.

The use cases should demonstrate the value of sharing FAIR and open research data, help to establish data sharing and management practices within the involved communities and across the Member States and Associated Countries, leveraging European research infrastructures and e-Infrastructures. The use cases should provide feedback to the EOSC Partnership on the desired future evolution of EOSC. Special attention shall be put on aspects of data harmonisation, data quality assurance, integration of data collection, data privacy and security, big-data analysis and machine learning methods, data and model validation, as well as on the socio-economic dimension of the use. Proposals should also foster the creation of user environments that researchers in this field can then use in order to seamlessly interact with digital information in the framework of the EOSC ecosystem.

Proposals should provide for activities to collaborate with relevant European Partnerships. Synergies with Horizon Europe Cluster 6 activities and other relevant initiatives, including actions stemming from Cohesion policy programmes, are welcome. Research and innovation should build on results of Horizon 2020 (e.g. the Blue Cloud project, the Odyssea project) and support the development of the Digital Twin of the Ocean. Proposers should consider already established ESFRI research infrastructures and efforts by relevant ESFRI cluster projects.

To ensure complementarity of outcomes, proposals are expected to cooperate and align with activities of the EOSC Partnership and to coordinate with relevant initiatives and projects contributing to the development of EOSC. In particular, in areas such as data interoperability, metadata and vocabularies, the use of persistent identifiers or AAI, proposals should coordinate and establish a feedback mechanism with the awarded proposal/s from the topic HORIZON-INFRA-2021-EOSC-01-05 in order to ensure alignment with EOSC policies and to identify common useful tools and resources as well as relevant data repositories that comply with EOSC guidelines. In this topic the integration of the gender dimension (sex and gender analysis) in research and innovation content is not a mandatory requirement.

HORIZON-INFRA-2022-EOSC-01-04: Support for initiatives helping to generate global standards, specifications and recommendations for open sharing of FAIR research data, publications and software

Expected Outcome: Project results are expected to contribute to all the following expected outcomes:

1.standards, recommendations and methodologies essential for putting FAIR principles into practice and supporting the development of the EOSC ecosystem are developed in alignment with international efforts and practices;

2.contribute to the Horizon Europe EOSC Partnership.

Scope: Support, directly or in combination with financial support to third parties, the community-driven processes that involve the research community and other stakeholders from across the world to foster the development, adoption and maintenance of generic and/or domain specific research data solutions suited to the EOSC context as well as to similar initiatives being built by other international partners. Proposals should facilitate and promote the participation of European stakeholders in such international processes.

To ensure complementarity of outcomes, proposals are expected to cooperate and align with activities of the EOSC Partnership and to coordinate with relevant initiatives and projects contributing to the development of EOSC. In particular, actions funded under this topic should coordinate with the awarded grant/s under the topic HORIZON-INFRA-2021-EOSC-01-05 and the future procurement activity under Other Actions 54 .

DESTINATION – RESEARCH INFRASTRUCTURE SERVICES TO SUPPORT HEALTH RESEARCH, ACCELERATE THE GREEN AND DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION, AND ADVANCE FRONTIER KNOWLEDGE (INFRASERV)

Inclusive access to the services provided by research infrastructures in the European Research Area is essential both for the quality of the research produced and for the training of researchers. Easy access to high-quality resources, based on clear conditions and with appropriate funding, is an important and attractive feature of the EU research and innovation system, allowing researchers to move within or from outside Europe to perform their research. An open landscape of RIs in Europe contributes to the circulation of skills and attraction of talents and promotes European cohesion.

The support under past Framework Programmes of trans-national and virtual access to RIs has opened to research communities across Europe state-of-the-art services and resources for their scientific activities. RIs are key players in the generation of knowledge and drivers of scientific excellence in Europe. In conjunction with the European Open Science Cloud and Technology Infrastructures, they are crucial enablers of research and innovation. The provision of services at EU level has been so far mainly organised per types of infrastructures or disciplines. The complexity and urgency of the socio-economic and environmental transition that Europe is facing requires interdisciplinary approaches and a new challenge-driven provision of customised services able to accelerate the pace of the research cycle and the delivery of solutions.

Actions under this destination will provide efficient and customised research infrastructure services to drive and enable the transition toward a sustainable Europe and a prosperous economy. RI services (e.g. access to unique scientific tools and facilities, samples provision, processing and analysis, data and modelling services) will be directed to support an effective and responsive health system and to accelerate the transition towards a green and digital future. Specific alignments and synergies with priorities in Pillar 2 will be developed and research infrastructure support will duly contribute to the identified missions and partnerships under Horizon Europe. At the same time, research infrastructures, which are key players in the generation of fundamental knowledge and drivers of scientific excellence in Europe, will also continue enabling the advancement of frontier knowledge in areas complementary to those addressed through a challenge-driven approach.

Proposals for topics under this destination should set out a credible pathway to contributing to several of the following impacts:

1.Reinforced research infrastructures capacity to provide at scale and across the EU services to support excellent research to address societal challenges, and Horizon Europe missions and partnerships’ objectives;

2.Enhanced and increased society’s long-term and consistent problem-solving capacity and evidence-based policy making in areas linked to health, and the green and digital transition, including a better understanding of socio-economic implications, through the provision of innovative, customised and efficient RI services;

3.New discoveries and knowledge breakthroughs enabled by access provision to the best and in some cases unique state-of-the-art RIs;

4.A new generation of researchers trained to optimally exploit all the essential and advanced tools for their research;

5.Cross-fertilisation and a wider sharing of knowledge and technologies across disciplines and between academia and industry and businesses.

The following call(s) in this work programme contribute to this destination:

Call - Research infrastructure services to support health research, accelerate the green and digital transformation, and advance frontier knowledge (2021)

HORIZON-INFRA-2021-SERV-01

Conditions for the Call

Indicative budget(s) 55

Topics under this call bring together several complementary and interdisciplinary research infrastructures to provide trans-national access (in-person, when the user visits the infrastructure to make use of it or remote access) and/or virtual access to integrated and customised research infrastructures services for challenge-driven research and innovation or advancing frontier knowledge. Access also includes ad hoc users’ training and scientific and technical support. Harmonisation, customisation and virtualisation of research infrastructures services will also be supported.

A challenge-driven provision of research infrastructure services

Proposals are invited against the following topic(s):

HORIZON-INFRA-2021-SERV-01-01: Research infrastructures services to support research addressing cancer

Expected Outcome: Project results are expected to contribute to all the following expected outcomes:

1.provision of innovative, customised and efficient RI services enhancing and increasing society’s long-term and consistent problem-solving capacity and evidence-based policy making in the health areas, including a better understanding of socio-economic implications;

2.advancement of knowledge for personalised cancer prevention strategies and treatments;

3.accelerated availability of solutions and products to patients in need;

4.wider access to specialised R&I services to underpin the competitiveness of the European industry and of biotech SMEs developing new personalised cancer prevention strategies and treatments.

Scope: Proposals under this topic aim at integrating at EU level and providing access to a wide and inclusive portfolio of complementary research infrastructure services, including data services, and customised workflows supporting R&I projects along the development pipeline from discovery research to personalised treatment of cancer. Services should also support activities addressing the socio-economic dimension of cancer, the development of evidence-based public health measures and patient-centred approaches, as well as regulatory aspects of novel biomedical products or relevant biomarkers.

Proposals will support the provision of trans-national and/or virtual access to researchers as well as training for using the infrastructures, and activities to improve, customise and combine the services the infrastructures provide, so as to facilitate and integrate the access procedures and to further develop the remote or virtual provision of services.

In order to facilitate user access, different interfaces could be developed, offering tailored resources and services for different types of cancer or different classes of users.

Proposals should adhere to the guidelines and principles of the European Charter for Access to Research Infrastructures 58 .

Proposals could foster cross-fertilisation by offering technologies involved in cancer advanced therapies to research projects targeting other major chronic disease.

Data management (and related ethics issues), interoperability, as well as the connection of digital services (e.g. data services) to the European Open Science Cloud, should be duly addressed.

Appropriate links and complementarities will be ensured with the Horizon Europe Mission on cancer 59 . Other major European or international initiatives, including the EU Beating Cancer Plan and the new EU biomedical research agency recently announced by the European Commission, should be duly taken into account. Whenever appropriate, proposals should foster the use and deployment of (open) global standards.

Proposals should make available to researchers the widest and most comprehensive portfolio of research infrastructures services which are relevant for the scope. To this extent, they should involve, as beneficiaries or as third parties, the necessary interdisciplinary set of research infrastructures of European interest 60 that provide such services. The inclusiveness of the proposal will be taken into account in the Excellence score. Proposals including only few of the research infrastructures services relevant to the scope will be scored lower.

Proposals should also look to establish active collaboration with clinical centres to facilitate translation of research results into clinical practice.

Research infrastructures from third countries 61 may be involved when appropriate, in particular when they offer complementary or more advanced services than those available in Europe.

Proposals should consider the inclusion of infrastructures that can facilitate a rapid transition of research findings to innovations and therefore, to society.

Proposals should include an outreach and engagement plan to actively advertise its services to targeted research communities and, if applicable, to relevant industries, including SMEs.

To identify and better exploit related synergies, share results and avoid overlaps, grants awarded under this topic should cooperate with those awarded under topic HORIZON-INFRA-2021-EOSC-01-06. To this extent, proposals should provide for dedicated activities and earmark appropriate resources.

Proposals are expected to exploit synergies and to ensure complementarity and coherence with other EU grants supporting access provision.

Proposals will include the list of services/installations 62 opened by research infrastructures for trans-national or virtual access and the amounts of units of access made available for users. Further conditions and requirements relating to access provisions that applicants should fulfil when drafting a proposal are given in the “Specific features for Research Infrastructures” section of this Work Programme. Compliance with these provisions will be taken into account during evaluation.

HORIZON-INFRA-2021-SERV-01-02: Research infrastructures services for a sustainable and resilient agriculture and agro-ecological transitions

Expected Outcome: Project results are expected to contribute to all the following expected outcomes:

1.provision of innovative, customised and efficient RI services enhancing and increasing society’s long-term and consistent problem-solving capacity and evidence-based policy making for resilient and sustainable agriculture systems and its nexus with environment, health and food security, including a better understanding of socio-economic implications;

2.wider understanding of the main threats (e.g.: emerging pests and diseases, antimicrobial resistance, climate change;) and socio-economic benefits (e.g.: high quality, safe, accessible and affordable food; improved human and animal wellbeing; resilience of local communities;) of a systemic approach to sustainable and resilient agriculture and agroecological transition;

3.higher levels of integration between RIs services to better support the development of sustainable agroecological systems for a healthy planet as well as the protection and preservation of natural resources and biodiversity under changing climate conditions;

4.wider catalogues of RI services and capacities enabling researchers to access, generate, share, analyse and interpret various and heterogeneous factors influencing agro-ecological systems and thus paving the way to ambitious and sustainable advancements in the field and foster trans-disciplinarity;

5.strengthened climate-change resilience, sustainability and the development of smart innovation in agriculture for sustainable rural transformation;

6.effective support to the Green Deal objectives, the One Planet Summit’s commitments, the implementation of the Farm to Fork strategy and enhanced contribution to related SDGs, notably poverty, hunger, ecosystems’ sustainability and climate action.

Scope: This topic aims at integrating and providing trans-national and/or virtual access to a complementary and interdisciplinary research infrastructures services to support R&I in view of achieving a sustainable and resilient agriculture and support agro-ecological transitions, in line with the One-Health approach. This approach appears to be particularly relevant to provide evidence to restore biodiversity, increase efficiency in the use of resources and prevent future crises. Research infrastructures should integrate, customise and offer a wide range of services to support agricultural research also in relation with agroforestry, aquaculture, horticulture, husbandry and pastoralism, taking into account the value chain, social and behavioural aspects and possibly human and animal nutrition dimensions.

Appropriate links and complementarities will be ensured with Horizon Europe Missions, in particular the one on Soil health and food 64 , on Adaptation to climate change including societal transformation 65 and with the relevant Horizon Europe partnerships identified in the Horizon Europe strategic plan, in particular the ones on “accelerating farming systems transitions: agroecology living labs and research infrastructures”, “animal health and welfare” and “agriculture of data 66 ”. Other major European or international initiatives relevant for the scope should be taken into account. Whenever appropriate, proposals should foster the use and deployment of global standards.

Proposals will support access provision to researchers as well as training for using the infrastructures, and activities to improve, customise and integrate the services the infrastructures provide, so as to facilitate and integrate the access procedures and to further develop the remote or virtual provision of services.

Proposals should adhere to the guidelines and principles of the European Charter for Access to Research Infrastructures 67 .

RIs services will include access to agricultural data, tools and models relevant for human, plants and animal health and wellbeing; tools for rapid and precise analysis of agronomic and husbandry practices’ performance and main threats on agriculture (i.e. emerging pests and diseases, climate change, including drought, soil health, pollution and contaminants, etc.); methods to assess socio-economic impact of moving to more sustainable and resilient agriculture including agroecological transition (e.g. quality and safe food, health and wellbeing of people, animals and plants, farm and rural resilience). RI services will also support the development of mitigation and adaptation strategies and policy frameworks for a more resilient and sustainable agriculture.

Data management (and related ethics issues), interoperability, as well as the connection of digital services (e.g. data services) to the European Open Science Cloud, should be addressed where relevant. Appropriate links and complementarities will be ensured with the relevant data spaces.

Proposals should make available to researchers the widest and most comprehensive portfolio of research infrastructures services which are relevant for the scope. To this extent, they should involve, as beneficiaries or as third parties, the necessary interdisciplinary set of research infrastructures of European interest 68 that provide such services. The inclusiveness of the proposal will be taken into account in the Excellence score. Proposals including only few of the research infrastructures services relevant to the scope will be scored lower.

Research infrastructures from third countries 69 may be involved when appropriate, in particular when they offer complementary or more advanced services than those available in Europe.

Proposals should include an outreach plan to actively advertise its services to targeted research communities and, if applicable, to relevant industries, including SMEs.

Proposals are expected to exploit synergies and to ensure complementarity and coherence with other EU grants supporting access provision.

Proposals will include the list of services/installations 70 opened by research infrastructures for trans-national or virtual access and the amounts of units of access made available for users. Further conditions and requirements relating to access provisions that applicants should fulfil when drafting a proposal are given in the “Specific features for Research Infrastructures” section of this Work Programme. Compliance with these provisions will be taken into account during evaluation. In this topic the integration of the gender dimension (sex and gender analysis) in research and innovation content is not a mandatory requirement.

HORIZON-INFRA-2021-SERV-01-03: Research infrastructures services for responding to climate-related risks on the environment

Expected Outcome: Project results are expected to contribute to all of the following expected outcomes:

1.enhanced and increased society’s long-term and consistent problem-solving capacity and evidence-based policy making in areas of climate-related risks, risk management, health and green transition, including a better understanding of socio-economic implications, through the provision of innovative, customised and efficient RI services;

2.enhanced and integrated cross-disciplinary R&I capacities addressing climate related-risks in Europe and in particular support relevant R&I objectives of Horizon Europe clusters, missions or partnerships;

3.harmonisation of data policies and management of IPRs and ethical issues; interoperability across disciplines and with risk management platforms;

4.researchers in the environment and climate change able to optimally exploit the research infrastructure services relevant for their research.

Scope:  

Climate change and land use are increasing the occurrence and severity of natural hazards notably floods, storm surges, landslides, droughts, desertification, cryosphere melting and fires in Europe and their negative impacts. Research to understand the interlinked processes and to develop new knowledge and tools necessary to better predict, mitigate and adapt to these risks requires an integrated and strongly cross-disciplinary approach and access to very diverse research infrastructures (such as observatories, experimental facilities, modelling capacities or data infrastructures). However, necessary research infrastructures, including those prioritised by ESFRI, are often targeting primarily one or few disciplines, scientific communities or risks and cannot, individually, sufficiently serve a truly integrated and cross-disciplinary approach.

Proposals will bring together key complementary and possibly heterogeneous national and European research infrastructures to provide effective access to an integrated wide range of RI services (e.g.: observations, models and experimental platforms) necessary for highly cross-disciplinary research and innovation addressing climate-related multi-hazards risks in Europe including their social dimension. Actions will in particular offer, when appropriate, fit-for-purpose access modalities facilitating the joint selection and or coherent scheduling of cross-disciplinary user project(s) by several research infrastructures, ad-hoc support and training of (new) users, customised RI data, data products, scientific services including joint services by complementary infrastructures. Actions will develop interoperability among the research infrastructures as well as with relevant initiatives and programmes and facilitate the use of external data and services, such as Copernicus services, to further develop their portfolio of multi- and cross-disciplinary scientific services.

Proposals aim at supporting the provision of trans-national and/or virtual access to researchers as well as training for using the infrastructures, and activities to improve, customise and integrate the services the infrastructures provide, so as to facilitate and integrate the access procedures and to further develop the remote or virtual provision of services.

Proposals should adhere to the guidelines and principles of the European Charter for Access to Research Infrastructures 72 .

Data management (and related ethics issues), interoperability, as well as the connection of digital services (e.g. data services) to the European Open Science Cloud, should be addressed where relevant.

Proposals should duly take into account major European or international initiatives relevant in the field/for the scope. Whenever appropriate, they should foster the use and deployment of global standards.

Proposals should make available to researchers the widest and most comprehensive portfolio of research infrastructures services which are relevant for the scope. To this extent, they should involve, as beneficiaries or as third parties, the necessary interdisciplinary set of research infrastructures of European interest 73 that provide such services. The inclusiveness of the proposal will be taken into account in the Excellence score. Proposals including only few of the research infrastructures services relevant to the scope will be scored lower.

Research infrastructures from third countries 74 may be involved when appropriate, in particular when they offer complementary or more advanced services than those available in Europe.

Proposals should include an outreach plan to actively advertise its services to targeted research communities and, if applicable, to relevant industries, including SMEs.

Proposals are expected to exploit synergies and to ensure complementarity and coherence with other EU grants supporting access provision.

Actions should design customised and/or new RI services taking into account the needs of ongoing research in the field and of existing disaster risk management knowledge platforms and networks (e.g. the JRC Disaster Risk Management Knowledge Centre). Due attention to the latest development of Horizon Europe priorities, its Missions and Partnerships will ensure appropriate links and complementarities. Actions should provide for a flexible approach to address ad-hoc R&I specific requests and to respond to long-term or recurrent needs.

Proposals could consider, for their inclusion in the service portfolio, relevant services and expertise offered by the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC), and in particular by its Molecular Ecotoxicology and Microbiology laboratory  75 , for the detection of antimicrobial resistance genes, viral RNA in water by quantitative PCR, metagenomics analysis of water samples, as well as in-house bioassays systems for detection of chemical pollutants’ mixture analysis.

Proposals will include the list of services/installations 76 opened by research infrastructures for trans-national or virtual access and the amounts of units of access made available for users. Further conditions and requirements relating to access provisions that applicants should fulfil when drafting a proposal are given in the “Specific features for Research Infrastructures” section of this Work Programme. Compliance with these provisions will be taken into account during evaluation. In this topic the integration of the gender dimension (sex and gender analysis) in research and innovation content is not a mandatory requirement.

HORIZON-INFRA-2021-SERV-01-04: Research infrastructures services enabling the development of materials for a circular economy

Expected Outcome: Project results are expected to contribute to all the following expected outcomes:

1.enhanced and increased society’s long-term and consistent problem-solving capacity and evidence-based policy making in areas of sustainable materials and green transition, including a better understanding of socio-economic implications, through the provision of innovative, customised and efficient RI services;

2.development of a world-class European research and technology ecosystem underpinning the development of materials and materials processing and the related value chains;

3.optimum exploitation of R&I services relevant for materials research for a circular economy;

4.enhanced competitiveness of current and emerging industries through the availability of the most advanced research and technology infrastructures R&I services;

5.breakthrough research and innovation in materials development and materials processing;

6.materials enabling products with increased durability and/or reusability 78 ;

7.cross-fertilisation and a wider sharing of knowledge and technologies across the various disciplines that contribute to materials for a circular economy;

8.enhanced socio-economic impact of investments in research infrastructures from EU countries and from the European Structural and Investment Funds.

Scope: This action brings together several complementary and interdisciplinary key research infrastructures relevant for materials research and innovation for a circular economy. The facilities will provide coordinated and integrated transnational and/or virtual access to technically advanced instrumentation and scientific methods in a user-friendly way. The facilities will also jointly develop and provide specific service workflows that are relevant for the R&I activities. The services should address different TRLs and they should be relevant for stakeholders along the whole value chain and in view of possible industrial applications. The facilities will provide training for their use including for services such as materials modelling, data mining, and experiment design.

Proposals aim at supporting the provision of trans-national and/or virtual access to researchers as well as training for using the infrastructures, and activities to improve, customise and integrate the services the infrastructures provide, so as to facilitate and integrate the access procedures and to further develop the remote or virtual provision of services.

Access provision activities will also contribute to address the objectives of European initiatives, such as the Circular Economy Action Plan and the EU Strategy for Plastics in the Circular Economy, to tackle critical issues such as materials design, processing, recycling, and recovery in a cradle-to-cradle cycle.

Proposals should adhere to the guidelines and principles of the European Charter for Access to Research Infrastructures 79 .

Proposals should clearly identify research communities and potential industrial users, which can benefit from this pan-European open access to research services and advanced instrumentations offered by internationally renowned facilities and strengthen the cooperation among academic and industrial researchers.

Proposals are expected to take into account relevant major European initiatives, such as the Open Innovation Test Beds, to exploit synergies or to build partnerships. Whenever appropriate, they should foster the use and deployment of global standards.

Data management (and related ethics issues), interoperability, as well as the connection of digital services (e.g. data services) to the European Open Science Cloud, should be addressed where relevant.

Proposals should make available to researchers the widest and most comprehensive portfolio of research infrastructures services which are relevant for the scope. To this extent, they should involve, as beneficiaries or as third parties, the necessary interdisciplinary set of research infrastructures of European interest 80 that provide such services. The inclusiveness of the proposal will be taken into account in the Excellence score. Proposals including only few of the research infrastructures services relevant to the scope will be scored lower.

Research infrastructures from third countries 81 may be involved when appropriate, in particular when they offer complementary or more advanced services than those available in Europe.

Proposals should include an outreach plan to actively advertise its services to targeted research communities and, if applicable, to relevant industries, including SMEs.

Proposals are expected to exploit synergies and to ensure complementarity and coherence with other EU grants supporting access provision.

Proposals will include the list of services/installations 82 opened by research infrastructures for trans-national or virtual access and the amounts of units of access made available for users. Further conditions and requirements relating to access provisions that applicants should fulfil when drafting a proposal are given in the “Specific features for Research Infrastructures” section of this Work Programme. Compliance with these provisions will be taken into account during evaluation. In this topic the integration of the gender dimension (sex and gender analysis) in research and innovation content is not a mandatory requirement.

HORIZON-INFRA-2021-SERV-01-05: Research infrastructures services for sustainable and inclusive Global Value Chain and Europe recovery from socio-economic crises

Expected Outcome: Project results are expected to contribute to all the following expected outcomes:

1.scientific evidence for developing the European Recovery Plan and the design of European policies for trade, production, employment and investments in relation to Global Value Chain;

2.enhanced society’s long-term and consistent problem-solving capacities to recover from socio-economic crises;

3.strengthened EU position on the global market;

4.contribution to the definition of standards in evolving markets;

5.provision of evidence on labour market patterns and needed skills.

Scope: Global value chains (GVCs) nowadays account for almost half of all international trade. In this age of global value chains, and especially at a time when the world economy and supply chains are challenged by the COVID-19 crisis, GVCs and their role in international trade and economic growth across the world as well as their impact on employment and skill are more important than ever.

Proposals will bring together complementary and possibly heterogeneous national and European research infrastructures to provide effective access to an integrated wide range of RI services providing insights into the functioning, characteristics and impacts of Global Value Chains. Research infrastructures services will allow to assess to what extent the configuration of value chains helps to reinforce the resilience of production processes, investments and employment. They will also enable research in and analysis of the consequences of the international fragmentation of production.

Proposals will support the provision of trans-national and/or virtual access to researchers as well as training for using the infrastructures, and activities to improve, customise and integrate the services the infrastructures provide, so as to facilitate and integrate the access procedures, and to further develop the remote or virtual provision of services. Proposals should adhere to the guidelines and principles of the European Charter for Access to Research Infrastructures 84 .

Data management (and related ethics issues), interoperability, as well as the connection of digital services (e.g. data services) to the European Open Science Cloud, should be addressed where relevant.

Proposals should duly take into account major European or international initiatives relevant in the field/for the scope. Whenever appropriate, they should foster the use and deployment of global standards.

Proposals should make available to researchers the widest and most comprehensive portfolio of research infrastructures services which are relevant for the scope. To this extent, they should involve, as beneficiaries or as third parties, the necessary interdisciplinary set of research infrastructures of European interest 85 that provide such services. The inclusiveness of the proposal will be taken into account in the Excellence score. Proposals including only few of the research infrastructures services relevant to the scope will be scored lower.

Research infrastructures from third countries 86 may be involved when appropriate, in particular when they offer complementary or more advanced services than those available in Europe.

Proposals should include an outreach plan to actively advertise its services to targeted research communities and, if applicable, to relevant industries, including SMEs.

Proposals are expected to exploit synergies and to ensure complementarity and coherence with other EU grants supporting access provision.

Proposals will include the list of services/installations 87 opened by research infrastructures for trans-national or virtual access and the amounts of units of access made available for users. Further conditions and requirements relating to access provisions that applicants should fulfil when drafting a proposal are given in the “Specific features for Research Infrastructures” section of this Work Programme. Compliance with these provisions will be taken into account during evaluation.

HORIZON-INFRA-2021-SERV-01-06: Enabling research infrastructure services for better use of imaging data to address challenges in thematic research areas

Expected Outcome:  

Project results are expected to contribute to some of the following expected outcomes:

1.improved acquisition, quality, interoperability and analysis of imaging data from different disciplines (e.g.: health & food, climate and environmental research, digital transformation);

2.wider use of image analysis services based on AI in different scientific areas.

Scope: The availability of high-performance image analysis tools, including those based on AI, through the provision of RI services, has a great potential to improve the use of image data for research purposes. These services enable better use of imaging data by aligning data formats, ensuring better data quality and noise reduction, improving interoperability, applying advanced data analysis, interpretation and potentially visualisation, as well as by integrating imaging data with other data sets of different types.

Use of artificial intelligence as enabler for better exploitation of data sets for research queries will be an important contribution from research infrastructures to the Commission’s AI strategy proposed in the Commission’s White Paper On Artificial Intelligence - A European approach to excellence and trust (COM(2020) 65 final). Proposals under this topic bring together several complementary and interdisciplinary RIs to provide trans-national access (in-person, when the user visits the infrastructure to make use of it or remote access) and/or virtual access to integrated and customised RI services for challenge-driven research and innovation. Access also includes ad hoc users’ training and scientific and technical support. Harmonisation, customisation and virtualisation of RI services will also be supported.

Successful proposals will offer services, including AI-based services for improved analysis of imaging data in different thematic areas (e.g. environmental monitoring, life sciences, chemistry, physics,...). Appropriate links and complementarities must be ensured with the existing AI4EU platform 88 and relevant activities under Pillar II of Horizon Europe.

AI-based tools and services will make use of the EOSC commons as working environment where these tools, services and relevant data sets will be made findable and accessible for use, thus making EOSC operational for the delivery of research infrastructure data services for thematic research challenges.

Research infrastructures services advancing frontier knowledge

Proposals are invited against the following topic(s):

HORIZON-INFRA-2021-SERV-01-07: Research infrastructures services advancing frontier knowledge

Expected Outcome: Project results are expected to contribute to all the following expected outcomes:

1.wider, simplified, and more efficient access to the best research infrastructures available to researchers to conduct curiosity-driven research, irrespective of location;

2.breakthrough and leading-edge research enabled by advanced research infrastructure services made available to a wider user community;

3. improved and harmonised RI services and broader use of RI resources across Europe deriving from the exploitation of synergies and complementarities;

4.a new generation of researchers trained to optimally exploit all the essential tools for their research;

5.cross-disciplinary fertilisations and a wider sharing of information, knowledge and technologies across scientific fields fostered by closer interactions between researchers active in and around research infrastructures;

6.better management, including implementing FAIR data principle, of the continuous flow of data collected or produced by research infrastructures.

Scope: This topic aims at providing trans-national access (on-site or remote) and/or virtual access to integrated and customised RI services for curiosity-driven research in wide scientific domains, offered by a wide range of complementary and interdisciplinary top level research infrastructures. Scientific domains are identified on the basis of a Multi-Annual Priority Setting (MAPS) exercise aiming at achieving a balanced coverage of scientific disciplines addressed under the INFRASERV destination as well as complementarities with Horizon 2020 ongoing grants offering access provision. Within identified domains, emerging areas of research can also be served. The MAPS follows the taxonomy used in the ESFRI Roadmap.

In 2021, the scientific domains called under this topic are:

1.Geosphere, including geo-hazards and geo-resources;

2.Biosphere: terrestrial biodiversity and ecosystems, including Arctic and forest;

3.Particle and nuclear physics.

Training for using the infrastructures, and activities to improve, customise and harmonise the services the infrastructures provide, so as to facilitate and integrate the access procedures, and to further develop the remote or virtual provision of services may also be supported.

Proposals should adhere to the guidelines and principles of the European Charter for Access to Research Infrastructures 89 .

Data management (and related ethics issues), interoperability, as well as the connection of digital services (e.g. data services) to the European Open Science Cloud, should be addressed where relevant.

Proposals should duly take into account major European or international initiatives relevant in the domain. Whenever appropriate, they should foster the use and deployment of (open) global standards.

Proposals should make available to researchers the widest and most comprehensive portfolio of research infrastructures services which are relevant for frontier research in the domain. To this extent, they should involve, as beneficiaries or as third parties, the necessary interdisciplinary set of research infrastructures of European interest 90 that provide such services. The inclusiveness of the proposal will be taken into account in the Excellence score. Proposals including only few of the research infrastructures services relevant to the scope will be scored lower.

Proposals in the Geosphere domain could consider, for their inclusion in the service portfolio, relevant services and expertise offered by the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC), and in particular by its European Laboratory for Structural Assessment (ELSA) 91 , for testing full-scale large structures under earthquakes and other threats to structural stability. The unique dimensions and testing capabilities of the ELSA Reaction Wall permit bi-directional testing of real size multi-storey buildings and critical elements of even larger structures, such as bridges.

Research infrastructures from third countries 92 may be involved when appropriate, in particular when they offer complementary or more advanced services than those available in Europe.

Proposals are expected to exploit synergies and to ensure complementarity and coherence with other EU grants supporting access provision.

Proposals will include the list of services/installations 93 opened by research infrastructures for trans-national or virtual access and the amounts of units of access made available for users.

Further conditions and requirements relating to access provisions that applicants should fulfil when drafting a proposal are given in the “Specific features for Research Infrastructures” section of this Work Programme. Compliance with these provisions will be taken into account during evaluation. In this topic the integration of the gender dimension (sex and gender analysis) in research and innovation content is not a mandatory requirement.

Call - Research infrastructure services to support health research and accelerate the digital transformation (2022)

HORIZON-INFRA-2022-SERV-01

Conditions for the Call

Indicative budget(s) 94

EBRAINS 96 is an integrative, distributed digital research infrastructure (RI) of pan-European relevance, designed and prepared as part of the Human Brain Project 97 (HBP) during Horizon 2020 to cross-fertilise progress in neuroscience, medicine and advanced computing including AI.

While EBRAINS is a candidate ESFRI RI, the topic below is to support the RI implementation and enrichment to ensure the delivery of a cloud-based wide-range of integrated facilities and distributed specialised competence centres, for comprehensively serving the European communities for neuroscience and research in brain medicine, including for dementia and other neurodegenerative conditions, and brain-inspired cognitive technologies.

Proposals are invited against the following topic(s):

HORIZON-INFRA-2022-SERV-01-01: Implementing digital services to empower neuroscience research for health and brain inspired technology via EBRAINS

Expected Outcome: Project results are expected to contribute to all the following outcomes:

1.integrated multi-disciplinary collaborative tools and services widely serving the European neuroscientific community, providing them with FAIR data indexing and archival, multilevel data mining and modelling/simulation of brain functions, and empowering workflows for reproducible research;

2.a rich collection of multilevel human brain models, atlases and workflows, directly supporting the research and development for personalised brain medical treatments e.g. target binding drugs, precise neuro-stimulation positioning and guided surgery, regarding brain diseases such as epilepsy, Parkinson, consciousness disorders, or rare or multi-factor diseases;

3.a comprehensive set of cognitive brain model scaffolds and associated modular / large-size neuromorphic and neurorobotic facilities for assisting the design and validation of applicative cognitive technologies benefitting from neurosciences latest knowledge, as enablers for autonomous and adaptive robotics approaches that use fast sensory processing and decision-making capabilities;

4.supplementary population of EBRAINS facilities with multidisciplinary services/applications that answer well-identified new neuroscience related S&T needs, in correlation with national and European research priorities for neuroscience, brain medicine and cognitive-technologies;

5.integration of EBRAINS with EOSC and linkage with common European data spaces in the life science and health sector;

6.better-aligned national investments in neuroscience across Europe, building on the Member States’ and Associated Countries’ specialised competence centres, which in turn will help creating additional synergies and enabling further research activities around the EBRAINS services.

Scope: Building on the EBRAINS architecture and base facilities developed under Horizon 2020, the scope of this action is to:

1. To implement a user-friendly service infrastructure along the principles of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) to widely serve the research communities in neurosciences, brain medicine and brain-inspired cognitive technologies. This includes the following dimensions:

1.Enabling the EBRAINS research infrastructure digital facilities supporting neuroscience dedicated tools and services, with a high quality of service including robustness, security, scalability, flexibility, usability and user-centricity. This includes a sustainable system for allocation and management of data capacities and of simulation and computing service resources.

2.Establishing in-depth collaboration with teams from other European research and testing infrastructures and of EOSC, in order to ensure efficiency and harmonisation, e.g. regarding Authorisation, Authentication and Identification (AAI), Persistent Identifiers (PID), discovery ontologies and API for both services and data.

3.Directly interfacing with the European HPC capacities towards exascale, deployed in EuroHPC and capitalising on the FENIX 98 developments for big-data integration and interactive use.

4.Delivering an efficient Europe-wide service to researchers, based on promoting excellence and innovation, and supporting users’ digital experiments with the assistance of high-level support teams and feedback mechanisms, and guiding communities in developing novel software solutions that build on the EBRAINS base offering.

5.Deploying an open metrics framework to assess the EBRAINS performances reached, the efficiency of the facilities offered in particular regarding the human-based services, and the uptake especially regarding the enabled science excellence and related results and the medical and technological innovation empowerment.

2. To develop, integrate in EBRAINS, and operate:

1.Constantly improving open science services/applications that respond to up-to-date and upcoming identified needs of the neuroscientific community, with a co-design approach and in-depth engagement with scientific, medical and industrial stakeholders and the establishment of an appropriate and transparent prioritisation mechanism. This includes ensuring openness to other research groups and new applications; reaching out to scientific and industrial communities, including with tailored training and skills development programmes.

2.The deployment of complementary S&T services from regional or national competence nodes, supporting and enriching the cloud-based deliveries and facilitating the sharing of produced data and use of national resources.

In addition to the above, EBRAINS should open its approaches to other communities, going beyond neuroscience, for example by supporting compute-intensive simulation to identify candidate drugs addressing new disease targets in other explicit medical domains where this approach is justified.

The financial support to third parties mechanism (see specific call conditions) can be used to design and develop new services (under item 2) and/or to facilitate the co-design approaches and/or the targeted involvement of broader stakeholders, user communities and competence nodes.

DESTINATION – NEXT GENERATION OF SCIENTIFIC INSTRUMENTATION, TOOLS AND METHODS AND ADVANCED DIGITAL SOLUTIONS (INFRATECH)

Scientific communities cannot adequately respond to current research challenges without having access to state-of-the-art scientific instruments and tools. Their constant adaptation, upgrading and innovation, as the underlying technologies develop at a very rapid pace, is critical for providing the optimal conditions for scientific advancements and discoveries in Europe.

The aim of this destination is the development of ground-breaking RI technologies, including scientific instruments, tools, methods, and advanced digital solutions, to enable new discoveries and keep Europe’s RIs at the highest level of excellence in science, while paving the way to innovative solutions to societal challenges and new industrial applications, products and services. New instruments and tools (such as advanced sensors, imaging devices, light source detectors, high-tech developments for accelerators, robots/automated solutions) and advanced digital solutions (e.g. digital twins, data analytics and AI tools, etc.) for RI upgrade, will enable solutions to be found even for the most demanding scientific and societal challenges.

Proposals for topics under this destination should set out a credible pathway to contributing to one or several of the following impacts:

1.Enhanced global competitiveness and technological excellence of Europe in an extremely fast-moving environment through investments into the development, of forward-looking technical instruments and tools for European RIs.

2.Enhanced competitiveness of European industry through co-development with industrial actors of advanced RI technologies and technology transfer;

3.Opening up of new areas of research and development of new industrial applications/products;

4.Development of skills of RI staff aligned with the advancements of the RI technologies;

5.Transdisciplinarity, cross-fertilisation and a wider sharing of knowledge and technologies between academia and industry;

6.Wider use of AI in research and enhanced data-based research across Europe.

The following call(s) in this work programme contribute to this destination:

Call - Next generation of scientific instrumentation, tools and methods (2021)

HORIZON-INFRA-2021-TECH-01

Conditions for the Call

Indicative budget(s) 99

Proposals are invited against the following topic(s):

HORIZON-INFRA-2021-TECH-01-01: Interdisciplinary digital twins for modelling and simulating complex phenomena at the service of research infrastructure communities

Expected Outcome: Research infrastructures are not only thematically very diverse but also in terms of size, ranging from the long tail of science, often characterised by individual laboratories or small groups of researchers, to large, “big science” collaborations. Scientists and researchers, including the long-tail of science, lack capabilities enabling complex simulations, combining simulations with observations and dealing with very large volumes of diverse data from various and distributed sources. The availability of high-quality Digital Twins 101 across a wide range of thematic applications could fill this gap.

Project results are expected to contribute to all the following expected outcomes:

1.availability of a pre-operational prototype of an interdisciplinary Digital Twin, using a combination of the latest digital technologies, relevant to addressing challenges where multi-disciplinarity is the defining element of complexity;

2.availability of latest modelling and prediction technologies in a number of different areas widely serving research communities and supporting interoperability of data and software, integration and collaboration across different scientific domains, disciplines and across the different research infrastructures involved;

3.a robust framework enabling Researchers to ensure the quality, reliability, verifiability of the data, information and outputs of such Digital Twins and to exploit to the maximum the existing and new data made available through the Common European Data Spaces and the European Open Science Cloud.

Scope: Actions should develop digital twins that provide advanced modelling, simulation and prediction capabilities to RIs and their research communities through a convergent use of advanced digital technologies such as high performance computing, software, AI methods and big data analytics.

With the advent of big data analytics and supercomputing, AI methods have the potential to allow exploiting the full potential of simulations and observations at significantly enhanced scales and to substantially increase the value, which can be extracted from investments into digital infrastructures and hardware. This fusion of models and real-time data is of crucial importance in many scientific areas, which – due to the complexity of the underlying phenomena – are heavily dependent on converging traditional modelling with the increasing amount of real-time data in order to arrive at more accurate present-state assessments and predictions (e.g. high energy physics, astrophysics, environmental research, security applications, materials research, resource efficiency, econometrics, population dynamics and related global changes).

Achieving this will require a co-design approach with user communities. Target should be the development of more integrated systems and a consistent set of standard methods and protocols in the areas of (a) model and data fusion for optimal synergy between observations and models, including provisions to include information from the entire digital continuum (from smart sensors, IoT, big data to citizen science type of information, high-performance computing; and (b) visualisation and artificial intelligence based knowledge generation from spatio-temporal information.

Given the emerging nature of the Digital Twin concept as applied to more complex phenomena, work should also cover the development of quality measures and trust, development of standard quality mapping and indicators for appropriately communicating differences in qualities of inputs and outputs from digital twins, addressing issues such as data and model pedigree, accuracy and lack of knowledge.

In addition to addressing pertinent priority areas in an interdisciplinary manner, proposals should also demonstrate the following:

·Deliver a breakthrough in terms of accuracy and realism

·Optimally fuse observations and models

·Integrate downstream sectors at the source of data production (adjacent science sectors)

·Include a rigorous handling of quality and confidence of information

·Develop capabilities of the new digital continuum enabling research communities to continuously learn and update themselves from data and information originating from different sources

Work under this topic should reach a sufficiently high TRL level (6-7) to be considered for integration into operational activities of for example existing research infrastructures, the EOSC platform, and undertaken in related fields.

Work under this topic should link to relevant actions, when appropriate, under Digital Europe Programme (e.g. Destination Earth).

In this topic the integration of the gender dimension (sex and gender analysis) in research and innovation content is not a mandatory requirement.

Call - Next generation of scientific instrumentation, tools and methods (2022)

HORIZON-INFRA-2022-TECH-01

Conditions for the Call

Indicative budget(s) 102

Proposals are invited against the following topic(s):

HORIZON-INFRA-2022-TECH-01-01: R&D for the next generation of scientific instrumentation, tools and methods

Expected Outcome: Project results are expected to contribute to several of the following expected outcomes:

1.enhanced scientific competitiveness of European research infrastructures

2.foundations for the development of innovative companies;

3.increase of the technological level of industries through the co-development of advanced technologies for research infrastructures and creation of potential new markets;

4.integration of research infrastructures into local, regional and global innovation systems.

Scope: The aim of this topic is to deliver innovative scientific instrumentation, tools and methods, which advance the state-of-art of European RIs, and show transformative potential in RIs operation. The related developments, which underpin the provision of improved and advanced services, should lead research infrastructures to support new areas of research and/or a wider community of users, including industrial users.

Cutting-edge technologies will also enhance the potential of RIs to contribute addressing EU policy objectives and socio-economic challenges.

Proposals should address all following aspects:

1.Research and development of new scientific instrumentation, tools and methods for research infrastructures taking into due account resource efficiency (e.g. energy consumption) and environmental (including climate-related) impacts;

2.their technology validation and prototyping;

3.training of RI staff for the operation and use of these new solutions;

4.the innovative potential for industrial exploitation of the solutions and/or for the benefits of the society.

Consortia must be built around a leading core of at least 3 world-class research infrastructures, being ESFRI infrastructures, European Research Infrastructures Consortia (ERICs) and/or other world-class research infrastructures of European interest 105 and can include a wider set of RIs. Other technological partners, including industry and SMEs, should also be involved, thus promoting innovation and knowledge sharing through co-development of new technical solutions for research infrastructures.

Proposals may include PCP 106 subcontracting activities as described in part H of the General Annexes of the Work Programme. This option encourages the use of public procurements for the competitive development of new specific solutions, whilst opening market opportunities for industry and researchers active in Europe. By establishing the procurement process in consecutive phases, the PCP activity can support the development of competing designs, prototypes, and solution testing. This ensures that investment risks do not prevent tackling specific scientific and technological issues, and allows to approach a problem from different angles and to test different solutions.

In this topic the integration of the gender dimension (sex and gender analysis) in research and innovation content is not a mandatory requirement.

DESTINATION – NETWORK CONNECTIVITY IN RESEARCH AND EDUCATION - ENABLING COLLABORATION WITHOUT BOUNDARIES (INFRANET)

The way scientific research is conducted has dramatically changed over the last years. Network, storage and computing services provide the foundation to conduct modern scientific research. Today the data for research is generated from countless sources and large instruments across the globe (e.g. CERN/Copernicus/Galileo/ESO 107 /SKA 108 ) and stored in data repositories. Allowing scientists to conduct excellent research requires high-bandwidth networks and network services to interconnect researchers, data and computing resources in a non-discriminatory way regardless of the location of the users and the resources.

The federation of National Research and Education Networks shape a fundamental building-block of Europe’s e-infrastructure landscape, delivering a pan-European network for scientific excellence, research, education and innovation by providing an integrated catalogue of services for connectivity, collaboration, security and trust-and-identity that ensure Europe remains at the forefront of research.

This community has the potential to develop a new pan-European investment programme to reach Terabit capacity and meet the huge growth in network capacity and demand for advanced services for Research and Education. This programme will set the basis for a paradigm shift in the digital science and computational infrastructures planned for research and education over the next 10 years.

The following call(s) in this work programme contribute to this destination:

Call - Network connectivity in Research and Education - Enabling collaboration without boundaries (2021)

HORIZON-INFRA-2021-NET-01-FPA

Conditions for the Call

Indicative budget(s) 109

Proposals are invited against the following topic(s):

HORIZON-INFRA-2021-NET-01-01-FPA: Framework Partnership Agreement (FPA) for Research and Education Networks

Expected Outcome: Project results are expected to contribute to all the following expected outcomes:

1.very high-bandwidth, end-to-end connectivity among research and education users all over Europe, and cross-border collaboration services that are reliable and secure, enabling Europe to overcome the remaining Digital Divide and to be at the forefront of global Research and Education, attracting data and talent;

2.secure access to computing facilities and data repositories for European and International research infrastructures (RIs) and paving the way for widespread access to common European Data Spaces;

3.an integrated portfolio of services for connectivity, collaboration, security, trust and identity;

4.collaboration with international partners, to foster global RI connectivity in line with Europe’s international cooperation policy objectives.

Scope: Building on the successful former partnership in this field and the achievements delivered under the Horizon 2020 framework programme, and considering the need for continuing the provision of critical services for the scientific and research community without disruption, the Commission calls for a new partnership with the National Research and Education Networks that would cover the whole duration of Horizon Europe, with the following general objectives:

1.Provide faster, resilient, agile and secure connectivity services for enabling scientists, researchers and students to access near real-time applications that support development of solutions and evidence-based decision-making for society and a worldwide effective collaboration of virtual research communities. The aim is to provide connectivity in the European Research Area (ERA) in multiples of 100 Gbps, paving the way for Terabit connectivity in certain areas where higher bandwidth is required for both disciplinary and interdisciplinary research collaboration amongst the researchers and scientists across Europe and beyond. Both the cross-European educational dimension and providing ERA scientists and researchers with optimal and secure access to research infrastructures (RI) and data resources worldwide are within the scope of the FPA.​

The scope of the partnership activities should be to deliver an action plan on basis of jointly agreed objectives, covering the next 7 years of work. The action plan should cover the following areas of activity:

1. High quality connectivity and collaboration services for excellence in Research and Education

1.Provide operational excellence by delivering and developing high quality, secure, trusted, interoperable and cost-effective services, connectivity and collaboration services for both Research and Education sectors and align service offering for supporting the policy agenda of ERA 110 , EEA 111 and EHEA 112 : to enable borderless collaboration, and attract talent from anywhere in the world to cooperate and exchange data with their peers.

2.Provide core services on security and identity federation, in coordination with other e-infrastructure and heterogeneous identity providers to enable service interoperability and a trusted and seamless user experience. National and European regulation in electronic identity (e.g., such e-IDAS) should be considered in particular for the development of Trust & Identity service in order to maximise societal impact beyond the research and scientific community.

3.Innovation of the service portfolio, including possible activities at lower TRL levels, in order to support researchers working on new network and added-value services such as super high transfer speeds, quantum network testing, etc.

4.Stimulating the development of consortium partners’ human capital (including training, secondment and exchange schemes) will be an important pillar in fostering service innovation and assuring expertise in all Member States and Associated Countries.

2. State-of-the-art connectivity for the wider European Digital Infrastructure

1.Push the boundaries of the state-of-the-art of the communication commons by constant development of both innovative multi-domain services and their use, and by translating this innovation into a competitive European ICT sector. This can include interconnection with key European data spaces and data repositories, including the Common European data spaces 113 and with a wide spectrum of actors, e.g. industry and SMEs in collaboration with commercial operators.

2.Adapt to the changing environment by the continuous development of the service portfolio of the European communications commons while maintaining the high level of accountability, security, measurability, transparency and sustainability. Actions should align with and contribute to the regulatory, standardisation and policy framework in order to enable full exploitation of the communications commons.

3.Progressive upgrade from a Gigabit to a Terabit network as a critical part of the main public digital infrastructures in the EU.

3. International connectivity and collaboration

1.Services and network architecture shall enable European driven researchers and scientists unconstrained access to data and resources worldwide while attracting data and talent. Activities in the international realm shall clearly foster international cooperation among researchers, contribute to the objectives of other relevant EU programmes and policies, and leverage the existing resources to maximise impact. Capacity building activities will be a crosscutting element in international cooperation.

Wherever necessary in implementing the action plan, the partnership should make recourse to procurement as a fundamental tool for maximising the utility of available resources and broadening the offer of state-of-the-art digital services to scientific, research and education communities. The action plan should specify the main areas where procurement is expected to take place. Whenever the partnership makes recourse to procurement activities, it should explore broader scenarios and business models (including the participation in innovative procurement actions) for the benefit of the research and education community and potentially the wider user base.

The partnership should also develop close synergies with EU Policy and EU Programmes, wherever these are relevant for its activities, for instance with Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) or the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) and its KICs, for activities related to human capital development, training, and international collaboration. It may also seek synergies with other programmes and funding lines of the EU that demonstrate greater impact potential and or better efficiency in the use of resources in the implementation of the action plan.

The long-term cooperation between the Commission and the selected partners will be formalised within a Framework Partnership Agreement (FPA) covering the entire duration of Horizon Europe. The extended duration of the partnership is justified by the need to provide a stable environment for the implementation of a European communications commons and uninterrupted provisioning of digital services.

Through the Framework Partnership Agreement (FPA), the Commission intends to award specific grants to implement the action plan agreed in the FPA, in accordance with the procedures laid down in the FPA (see also section on "Other actions").

Other Actions not subject to calls for proposals

Grants to identified beneficiaries

1. Conference on European Research Infrastructures: 20 years of ESFRI, achievements and future insights

Expected outcomes:

The conference will contribute to the following outcomes:

1.Valorisation of the impact of ESFRI on European R&I system over the 20 years

2.Reinforcement of the role of ESFRI and the European RIs in the renewed ERA

3.Increased awareness of the research and innovation actors of the opportunities provided by European RIs

Scope:

The conference is planned in France, under the French Presidency of the European Union, in the first semester of 2022.

The conference will focus on the following issues: (1) presentation of main achievements of ESFRI over the 20 years, (2) ESFRI process as catalyst for alignment of national RI priorities and funding, (3) changing landscape of R&I in Europe – challenges and opportunities for RIs, (4) ESFRI as a model for effective governance of R&I policy.

This grant will be awarded without a call for proposals, according to Article 195(e) of the Financial Regulation and Article 20(4) of the Horizon Europe Framework Programme and Rules for Participation, to the legal entity identified below, as this is the ministry responsible for the event designated by France.

Legal entities:

Ministère de l'Enseignement supérieur, de la Recherche et de l'Innovation, Rue Descartes 1 - 75005 Paris, France

Form of Funding: Grants not subject to calls for proposals

Type of Action: Grant to identified beneficiary according to Financial Regulation Article 195(e) - Coordination and support action

The general conditions, including admissibility conditions, eligibility conditions, award criteria, evaluation and award procedure, legal and financial set-up for grants, financial and operational capacity and exclusion, and procedure are provided in parts A to G of the General Annexes.

Indicative timetable: Second quarter of 2021

Indicative budget: EUR 0.10 million from the 2021 budget

2. International Conference on Research Infrastructures – ICRI 2022

Expected outcomes: Projects are expected to contribute to all the following outcomes:

1.Contribution to address global challenges with a global dimension;

2.Increased capacity of Europe to respond, in cooperation with international players, to emerging challenges at global level;

3.Development of further cooperation with ongoing key international partners for research infrastructures;

4.Enhanced role of the Union in international organisations and multilateral fora;

5.Progress towards the development of global research infrastructures.

Scope:

The International Conference on Research Infrastructures (ICRI) is organised alternatively in EU and in a Third Country, in cooperation with the European Commission. ICRI 2022 will contribute to the objectives of the INFRADEV destination.

The next ICRI Conference is planned in the Czech Republic, under the Czech Presidency, in the second semester 2022.

The objectives of the conference are (1) to provide an international forum for the discussion on the development of global research infrastructures, in particular, on issues of common interest such as the long-term sustainability of research infrastructures and their innovation potential; (2) to facilitate strategic international cooperation between European research infrastructures and their International counterparts; (3) to address the role of RIs to tackle global challenges and to contribute to the SDGs; (4) to analyse the resilience and adaptability of RIs in times of crisis.

This grant will be awarded without a call for proposals according to Article 195(e) of the Financial Regulation and Article 20(4) of the Horizon Europe Framework Programme and Rules for Participation to the legal entities identified below, as they have been designated by the Czech Republic and include the ministry responsible for the event.

Legal entities:

Ministerstvo školství, mládeže a tělovýchovy (Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports), Karmelitska 7, 11812 Prague, Czechia

Masarykova univerzita (MU), Zerotinovo namesti 9, 60177 Brno Stred, Czechia

Vysoké učení technické v Brně (Brno University of Technology), Antoninska 548/1, 60190 Brno Stred, Czechia

Form of Funding: Grants not subject to calls for proposals

Type of Action: Grant to identified beneficiary according to Financial Regulation Article 195(e) - Coordination and support action

The general conditions, including admissibility conditions, eligibility conditions, award criteria, evaluation and award procedure, legal and financial set-up for grants, financial and operational capacity and exclusion, and procedure are provided in parts A to G of the General Annexes.

Indicative timetable: Second quarter of 2021

Indicative budget: EUR 0.30 million from the 2021 budget

Specific Grant Agreements to the FPA for Research and Education Networks

The consortium of the selected Framework Partnership Agreement (FPA) for Research and Education Networks, is invited to submit proposals for two Specific Grant Agreements (SGA) for the first period of the partnership (2021-2023). The expected outcomes of the SGAs should be in line with the objectives defined in the Framework Partnership Agreement (FPA) action plan. The proposals will be assessed according to the evaluation criteria described in the specific conditions of the action and the requirements listed in the invitation letter from the Commission.

Two separate proposals for SGAs should be submitted, one addressing the first and second areas of activity of the FPA (namely, “High quality connectivity and collaboration services for excellence in Research and Education” and “State-of-the-art connectivity for the wider European Digital Infrastructure”) and another one addressing the third area of activity of the FPA (“International connectivity and collaboration”).

1. SGA for networking and collaboration services and investments in long-term capacity for Research and Education Networks in Europe

(1.a) This part of the action aims at implementing the first period of the FPA action plan, and in particular related to the action related to (1) high quality connectivity for excellence in Research and Education and (2) state-of-the-art connectivity for the wider European Digital Infrastructure 114 .

The scope will be further defined once the FPA is in place. The possible activities, in line with the final action plan, may include:

1.Maintenance, operation and upgrade of the production network infrastructure by pursuing a cost-effective approach in advance of demand growth and progressing quality requirements.

2.Pan-European innovative procurement efforts to assure access for researchers and students to state-of-the-art commercial services.

3.Operations of core network services (TRL8) and development of new ones (minimum TRL6) to cater for the new needs of institutions, research centres and end users

4.Support the current (TRL8) and development and prototyping (TRL6+) of added-value services (such as security services) and collaborative tools on top of core connectivity required by scientists, researchers and higher education students.

5.Support researchers by developing new network and added-value services (including those based on lower TRLs) such as super high transfer speeds, quantum network testing, high precision time distribution, and other metrology services for example.

6.Service level metrics, baseline and targets on quality of service for every service (connectivity and collaboration) in production stage.

7.Expansion of the agreements with operators and service providers (public and private) that enable scientists and researchers access to a broader set of data sources (including European Data spaces) and digital tools, and facilitate collaboration with SME’s and industry.

8.Maintain and evolve the current core operations on identity federations and ensuring support of more complex services.

9.Alignment of the AAI systems across various communities and RIs in Europe and assistance in deployment of community AAIs, including synergies with EU policies beyond the scientific and research domains, such as e-IDAS or ERASMUS+.

10.Effective communication and dissemination activities across domains and target audiences across Europe

11.Collaboration activities with other NRENs and RRNEs (National/Regional Research and Education Networks) outside the EU not covered in this or other programmes and that will contribute to the objectives of the action, including capacity development for researchers and scientists.

The aim is to provide faster, resilient, agile and secure connectivity and collaboration services for enabling scientists, researchers and students access to near real-time applications that support evidence-based decision-making in society and worldwide effective collaboration of virtual research communities.

The network infrastructure must offer state-of-the-art services for extracting the full potential and maximise value from the investments in data sources, research infrastructures and computing resources. The network services have to cater for virtual research teams from different domains and affiliations, providing trusted and secure access to heterogeneous digital resources and allowing collaboration with the private sector and SME’s, when necessary. The provision should cover overall connectivity within the ERA, including HPC connectivity.

Expected Outcomes of the activities under part 1.a:

1.pan-European unconstrained and non-discriminatory secure and trusted access to data sources, storage and computing services, allowing scientists to conduct excellent research regardless of their location and the location of data and computing resources;

2.evolved existing services and newly developed services to assure State-of-the art trusted and secure connectivity and collaboration services within Europe across the full spectrum of research and education networks in Europe;

3.high quality, cost-effective, secure and resilient connectivity services providing unconstrained capacity ahead of demand in the backbone network and NREN 115 access in multiples of 100Gbps, paving the way for Terabit connectivity;

4.exchange points for users beyond the traditional scientific and research communities within the remit of NRENs mandate, enabling data interoperability with for example SMEs and industry;

5.networking and access facilities to the European open Data Spaces;

6.authentication and authorisation Infrastructure (AAI) services and interoperability mechanisms with other well-accepted authentication systems and e-ID standards (in particular e-IDAS and its future evolution);

7.access for researchers and students to commercial services required for Open Science under European data requirements and at a good value;

8.support to training, dissemination for consolidating and expanding the cooperation and community building and for alignment with EU policy and participation with standardisation bodies.

(1.b) The activities in this part of the SGA should follow the action plan developed under the FPA for Research and Education Networks.

They should cover upfront investments for long-term acquisitions of capacity and associated equipment (excluding operating costs) for covering connectivity within Europe for new research technologies that have requirements beyond existing networking. These activities follow the successful models (e.g. BELLA-S1 & GN4-3N projects) with a dedicated action for covering full costs of equipment and acquisition of links (e.g. through IRU).

Activities within this part should be restricted to the procurement and launch into service of digital links. The selection of these should be fully aligned with the overall connectivity approach, which is developed and operated in part 1.a of the SGA.

Expected Outcomes of the activities under part 1.b:

1.procurement of new long-term network capacity in the most suitable contractual form (e.g., IRU, Indefeasible Rights of Use, for spectrum, dark fibre, etc.). The duration of the IRUs or participation/contract agreement shall minimise the TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) of links and provide for a minimum service of 7-10 years;

2.procurement of necessary equipment to operate and exploit the capacity acquired under the action;

3.a resilient topology that contributes in preserving European leadership in Research and education networking and aligns with EU principles on digital autonomy and sovereignty. The action will veil in particular avoiding systemic dependencies from non-associated countries.

Specific conditions:

7-years Framework Partnership Agreement for Research and Education Networks with identified beneficiary and specific grants awarded to identified beneficiary for Research and Innovation Action under the Framework Partnership Agreement.

In this action the integration of the gender dimension (sex and gender analysis) in research and innovation content is not a mandatory requirement.

Purchases of equipment, infrastructure, services or other assets used for the action under activities covering part 1.a should be declared as depreciation costs.

Equipment, infrastructure, services or other assets (such as IRUs) purchased specifically for the activities covered under part 1.b may be declared as full capitalised costs taking into account that their life span may extend after the duration of the action and beyond the FPA coverage.

The standard evaluation criteria, thresholds, weighting for award criteria and the maximum rate of co-financing for this type of action are provided in parts D and G of the General Annexes with the following exceptions for the evaluation criteria:

For the criterion Excellence the following sub-criteria apply:

1.Clarity and pertinence of the project’s objectives, including their relevance to the overarching goals of the FPA. Extent to which the proposed work is ambitious, and goes beyond the state-of-the-art.

2.Soundness of the proposed methodology, including the business model approach on service delivery and provision of innovative services and the related metrics.

3.Effectiveness and agility in developing new services according to the needs of a wide user base across multiple disciplines for excellent science and research.

Form of Funding: Grants not subject to calls for proposals

Type of Action: Specific grant agreement awarded without call for proposals in relation to a Framework Partnership Agreement

Indicative timetable: Second quarter of 2022

Indicative budget: EUR 55.00 million from the 2022 budget

2. SGA for investments on International connectivity and collaboration

The activities under this SGA should follow the action plan developed under the FPA for Research and Education Networks.

The action should mainly cover upfront investments for long-term acquisitions of capacity and associated equipment (excluding operating costs) for covering connectivity outside Europe. This action follows the successful models (e.g. BELLA-S1 & GN4-3N projects) with a dedicated action for covering full costs of equipment and acquisition of links (e.g. through IRU). It should be carried out in close partnership with key Regional European and International Partners and collaborations in Mediterranean, North and Latin American, Asian or other world regions where the EU and the Member States and Associated Countries have significant collaboration for research activities and/or investments in research infrastructures.

Activities within this action should be restricted to the procurement and launch into service of digital links. The selection of these should be fully aligned with the overall connectivity approach, which is developed and operated under the FPA.

Expected Outcomes of the action:

1.Maintenance, operation and upgrade of the existing production intercontinental network infrastructure by pursuing a cost-effective approach in advance of demand growth and progressing requirements from international research infrastructures (such as SKA etc.).

2.Procurement of new long-term network capacity in the most suitable contractual form (e.g., IRU, Indefeasible Rights of Use, for spectrum, dark fibre, etc.). The duration of the IRUs or participation/contract agreement shall minimise the TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) of links and provide for a minimum service of 7 years.

3.Procurement of necessary equipment to operate and exploit the capacity acquired under the action.

4.A resilient topology that contributes in preserving European digital autonomy and sovereignty, in particular avoiding systemic dependencies from non-associated countries, based on reciprocity and the international cooperation rules of Horizon Europe.

Specific conditions:

7-years Framework Partnership Agreement for Research and Education Networks with identified beneficiary and specific grants awarded to identified beneficiary for Research and Innovation Action under the Framework Partnership Agreement.

In this action the integration of the gender dimension (sex and gender analysis) in research and innovation content is not a mandatory requirement.

This action should cover full-cost of procurement of goods and services that are not covered already by the SGA.1. Equipment, infrastructure, services or other assets (such as IRUs) purchased specifically for the activities covered under SGA.2 must be declared as full capitalised costs taking into account that their life span may extend after the duration of the action and beyond the FPA coverage. As a transitory measure, recurrent costs of existing links or depreciation cost of existing equipment will be eligible under this action.

The standard evaluation criteria, thresholds, weighting for award criteria and the maximum rate of co-financing for this type of action are provided in parts D and G of the General Annexes with the following exceptions for the evaluation criteria:

For the criterion Excellence the following sub-criteria apply:

1.Clarity and pertinence of the project’s objectives, including their relevance to the overarching goals of the FPA. Extent to which the proposed work is ambitious, and goes beyond the state-of-the-art.

2.Soundness of the proposed methodology, including the approach on service delivery and provision of innovative services and the related metrics.

3.Extent to which the project proposes or makes use of innovative business models and optimises the utility of available resources on a global scale.

Form of Funding: Grants not subject to calls for proposals

Type of Action: Specific grant agreement awarded without call for proposals in relation to a Framework Partnership Agreement

Indicative timetable: Fourth quarter of 2021

Indicative budget: EUR 15.00 million from the 2021 budget

Other grants awarded without a call for proposals

1. FAIR and open data sharing in support to European preparedness for COVID-19 and other infectious diseases

As part of the EU response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and to the rising spread of SARS-CoV-2 variants, grants will be awarded without a call for proposal in accordance with Article 195 (b) of the Financial Regulation 2018/1046 to address this exceptional emergency. An invitation to apply for funding will be published on the Funding & Tenders Portal that will open a dedicated section where proposals can be submitted. This will be communicated to the National Contact Points. The invitation to apply for funding will be open to all eligible entities or limited to targeted entities, taking into account the need to achieve the underlying objectives in a quick and efficient manner considering the exceptional circumstances (‘extreme urgency’ due the COVID-19 pandemic).

Expected Outcome: Project results are expected to contribute to all the following expected outcomes:

1.European researchers and public health actors fighting the spread of infectious diseases, e.g. COVID-19 and emerging infectious diseases are able to store, share, access, analyse, process and cite research and clinical data and other research digital objects across disciplines and national borders and to collaborate with global partners;

2.federation of viral and human infectious disease data from national and international centres enables pan-European and global sharing and combination of research and clinical data, thereby catalysing and accelerating research advances to combat the COVID-19 pandemic and prepare for future outbreaks;

3.development of digital tools and data analytics for pandemic and outbreak preparedness, including tracking genomic variations of SARS-CoV-2, linking genomic and clinical data to support timely identification of variants of concern, and subsequent rapid characterisation of such strains to inform public health action;

4.linking of FAIR data and metadata on SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19, on other related viruses and diseases, and on socio-economic consequences, across research fields, from omics, clinical, and epidemiological research, to Social Sciences and Humanities accelerate infectious disease research, surveillance and outbreak investigation;

5.contribute to the Horizon Europe European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) Partnership and to the development of the European Health Data Space (EHDS).

Expected impact

Proposals should set out a credible pathway to contributing to one or several of the following impacts:

1.transforming the way researchers as well as relevant actors in the public and private sectors create, share and exploit research outputs (data, publications, protocols, methodologies, software, code, etc.) within and across research disciplines, and with the public health sector, leading to improved timeliness, better quality, more innovation, higher productivity of research and a better integration between research outputs and public health policy;

2.seamless access to and management of increasing volumes of research data following FAIR principles (and that are as open as possible, as closed as necessary) and other research outputs stimulating the development and uptake of a wide range of new innovative and value-added services from public and commercial providers;

3.improving trust in science through increased FAIRness, openness and quality of scientific research in Europe, supported by more meaningful monitoring and better facilitators for reproducibility, validation and re-use of research results, and by improving pathways for the communication of science to the public.

Scope: This action responds to the need to enable researchers, health care professionals and society at large to share, access, analyse, link and process research data and other research digital objects across disciplines and national borders in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. As seen with other infectious disease outbreaks, such as haemorrhagic fevers, COVID-19 will likely remain a societal challenge beyond the immediate outbreak, considering its destructive and disruptive impact on healthcare systems and the economy. In addition to the ongoing health threat from SARS-CoV-2, the risk from other emerging pathogens also persists, which will also require similar concerted action to identify and characterise infections with pandemic potential, and enable rapid public health action to mitigate health and societal impact. Provision of comprehensive open data on infectious agents and diseases during outbreaks support evidence-based quality assessment - across scientific, medical, public health and policy domains and promotes reproducibility of research outcomes. Particular importance should be placed on mobilising raw viral sequences and identifying and monitoring the spread of SARS-CoV-2 variants. European readiness for future pandemics is of utmost importance and should be addressed to ensure the preparedness of infrastructure building on already existing frameworks for broader use such as the EOSC.

Proposals should facilitate and accelerate the access to, and the linking of data and metadata on SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19, including through the European COVID-19 Data Portal 116 , the Versatile Emerging infectious disease Observatory 117 (VEO) and other relevant initiatives, with the emphasis on identifying and tracking of new SARS-CoV-2 variants and creating appropriate links with serology and other host data. The scope of the initiative should further expand to other relevant infectious diseases, and incorporate epidemiological, clinical (including Real World Data), and socio-economic data, spanning from molecular biology to other disciplines, including Social Sciences and Humanities. A One-Health approach building on the latest technological advances, covering epidemics and epizootics is encouraged. Particular importance should be given to the need of federating data between national centres to effectively manage data protection.

To ensure the interoperability of the data, community best practices including the use of community-endorsed standards and community metadata schemas should be encouraged. Newly implemented domain specific research data solutions from the project should feed into the work of established international initiatives. Particular attention should be given to the harmonisation and management of meta-data and sample- identifiers to ensure interoperability of national and regional efforts into the EOSC and the long-term cataloguing of data resources within the EOSC.

A strong focus should be placed on exploiting and contributing to EOSC capabilities for data access and federation as well as relevant standards and policies for managing, sharing and reusing research data from different disciplines. As such, the proposals should demonstrate the value of sharing FAIR research data that is as open as possible through EOSC, help consolidating data-sharing and data management practices across the Member States, Associated Countries and beyond, and provide feedback to the EOSC Partnership for the future evolution of EOSC.

Proposals should build on the European COVID-19 Data Platform 118 and support, directly or in combination with financial support to third parties, the creation of national and regional structures to coordinate and promote in-country actions, such as to further enhance genomic surveillance and rapid-response capabilities.

Cooperation with the grant awarded under the Other action “Research infrastructure services for rapid research responses to COVID-19 and other infectious disease epidemics” should be developed from the outset to identify and better exploit related synergies, share results, avoid overlaps and ensure that data generated from access to infectious disease services can be available for re-use through the EOSC. To this extent, proposals should provide for dedicated activities and earmark appropriate resources. Proposals should consider already established national and European infrastructures and build on existing efforts, including actions stemming from Cohesion policy programmes. Proposals should seek to establish synergies with the European Health Data Space as well as relevant initiatives under Digital Europe.

To ensure complementarity of outcomes, alignment with EOSC policies, and a synergetic development of different thematic areas within EOSC, proposals are expected to cooperate and align with activities of the EOSC Partnership and to coordinate with relevant initiatives and projects contributing to the development of EOSC, particularly in the areas of data interoperability.

All software developed under this action should be open source, licensed under a CC0 public domain dedication or under an open source license as recommended by the Free Software Foundation and the Open Source Initiative.

This action seeks to address the challenges linked to the COVID-19 variants. As such, the granting authority hereby requests activation of the public emergency provisions, meaning that the beneficiaries must comply with the public emergency related provisions listed in the General Annexes concerning the project implementation under - Intellectual Property Rights (IPR), background and results, access rights and rights of use (article 16 and Annex 5) for the duration of the pandemic; and under Communication, dissemination, open science and visibility (article 17 and Annex 5) during the entire duration of the action and for four years after the end of the action.

Specific Conditions

The general conditions, including admissibility conditions, eligibility conditions, award criteria, evaluation and award procedure, legal and financial set-up for grants, financial and operational capacity and exclusion, and procedure are provided in parts A to G of the General Annexes. The following topic specific conditions apply:

Eligibility conditions

Due to the urgency and geographical relevance of this action, and considering the Union’s interest to retain, in principle, relations with the countries associated to Horizon 2020 and other third countries in the process of association to Horizon Europe, legal entities established in Albania, Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Faroe Islands, Georgia, Iceland, Israel, Kosovo 119 , Moldova, Montenegro, Morocco, North Macedonia, Norway, Serbia, Switzerland, Tunisia, Turkey, Ukraine and United Kingdom are eligible for funding from the Union even if the Horizon Europe association agreement with the third country concerned does not apply at the time of signature of the grant agreement.

The consortium must include at least one independent legal entity established in a Member State and at least two other independent legal entities each established in different Member States or countries listed above.

Award criteria

Additional sub-criterion for Impact: