One of the highlights of the European research infrastructure landscape is the world's most powerful X-ray-laser, the European XFEL. The ELBEX (Extracted Lepton Beam at the European XFEL) proposal builds on this strength and will set up new opportunities for European scientists and innovators, by providing an extracted high energy electron beam for experiments. With ELBEX we propose a pathfinder project to demonstrate the feasibility of such a facility at the European XFEL. This unique new possibility would strengthen the global competitiveness of the European Research Area and create opportunities for new user groups. The high energy, high charge density and excellent quality of the electron beam, if brought into interaction with a strong laser beam, opens up the study of a range of scientific topics, most prominently, of strong field Quantum Electrodynamics (QED). For the first time, the Schwinger limit for the electromagnetic field strength, at which non-perturbative QED effects become relevant, could be reached experimentally in this facility. Studying the particles created in the photon beam dump opens up the possibility to search for feebly interacting particles, complementing current or planned experiments like FASER II or SHiP. In addition, the electron beam itself is at the centre of a range of highly relevant and ambitious experiments in the area of accelerator science and detector science. Within the ELBEX project, the installation of a facility to extract an electron beam from the European XFEL using a fast kicker magnet and to transport it into a multi-purpose experimental area will be prepared. On the condition that a positive decision by the European XFEL council is reached to grant an extended 12-week XFEL shutdown, the installation of the ELBEX facility is an option.

Nanomedicine is the application of nanotechnology to medicine and healthcare. The field takes advantage of the physical, chemical and biological properties of materials at the nanometer scale to be used for a better understanding of the biological mechanisms of diseases at the molecular level, leading to new targets for earlier and more precise diagnostics and therapeutics. Nanomedicine, rated among the six most promising Key Enabling Technologies, is one of the most important emerging areas of health research expected to contribute to one of the strategic challenges that Europe has to face in the future: Provide effective and affordable health care and assure the wellbeing of an increasingly aged population. EuroNanoMed III (ENM III) builds on the foundations of ENM I & II, which launched 7 successful joint calls for proposals since 2009, funded 51 transnational research projects involving 269 partners from 25 countries/regions, and allocated € 45,5 million to research projects from ENM funding agencies. ENM III consortium, reinforced with 12 new partners from Europe, Canada and Taiwan, is committed to fostering the competiveness of European nanomedicine actors taking into account recent changes in the landscape and new stakeholders and challenges, as identified in the SRIA in nanomedicine. The first joint call for proposals will be co-funded by ENM III partners and the EC. After the co-funded call, three additional joint transnational calls will be organized and strategic activities will be accomplished in collaboration with key initiatives in the field. ENM III actions focus on translatability of project results to clinical and industry needs.

OpenDreamKit will deliver a flexible toolkit enabling research groups to set up Virtual Research Environments, customised to meet the varied needs of research projects in pure mathematics and applications and supporting the full research life-cycle from exploration, through proof and publication, to archival and sharing of data and code. OpenDreamKit will be built out of a sustainable ecosystem of community-developed open software, databases, and services, including popular tools such as LinBox, MPIR, Sage(sagemath.org), GAP, PariGP, LMFDB, and Singular. We will extend the Jupyter Notebook environment to provide a flexible UI. By improving and unifying existing building blocks, OpenDreamKit will maximise both sustainability and impact, with beneficiaries extending to scientific computing, physics, chemistry, biology and more and including researchers, teachers, and industrial practitioners. We will define a novel component-based VRE architecture and the adapt existing mathematical software, databases, and UI components to work well within it on varied platforms. Interfaces to standard HPC and grid services will be built in. Our architecture will be informed by recent research into the sociology of mathematical collaboration, so as to properly support actual research practice. The ease of set up, adaptability and global impact will be demonstrated in a variety of demonstrator VREs. We will ourselves study the social challenges associated with large-scale open source code development and of publications based on executable documents, to ensure sustainability. OpenDreamKit will be conducted by a Europe-wide demand-steered collaboration, including leading mathematicians, computational researchers, and software developers long track record of delivering innovative open source software solutions for their respective communities. All produced code and tools will be open source.

The vision of FutureFoodS is to collectively achieve environmentally-friendly, socially secure, fair and economically viable healthy and safe Food Systems (FS) for Europe. FutureFoodS gather 87 partners from 22 EU Member States, 6 Associated Countries and 1 third country. FutureFoodS includes public and private actors, policy makers, foundations, locally, sub-nationally, nationally, EU-widely. All these FutureFoodS partners are fully aligned on the vision for the Partnership and the methodology for its implementation in line with SDG17 and EU Green Deal components. This vision has been broken down into general (GO), specific (SO) and operational (OO) objectives applying across the 4 R&I areas and 4 transversal activities identified by the FutureFoods consortium in its stable draft Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA) which constitutes the strategic backbone of the project. The four GO cover: GO1 - Functioning of FS; GO2 - System approaches; GO3 - Inclusive government; GO4 - Co-creation cases. These GO have then been translated into SO prioritised in line with the timescale and resources of the Partnership: SO1 - Change the way we eat; SO2- Change the way we process and supply food, SO3 - Change the way we connect with FSs and SO4 - Change the way we govern FS. In addition, 6 interconnected OO have been set: OO1- Pooling R&I resources and programming; OO2 - Operational FS Observatory; OO3 - Active FS knowledge Hub of FS Labs; OO4 - Functioning knowledge sharing and scaling mechanisms; OO5- Revisiting the SRIA; OO6 - Promoting, supporting, widening & gathering FS various communities. The objectives implemented in the 8 WPs of FutureFoodS will exert impact directly or indirectly in most of the destinations of Horizon Europe’s Cluster 6 2023-2024 work programme and particularly for the topic destination ‘Fair, healthy and environment-friendly FS from primary production to consumption’ echoing to the main EU and World FS policies & strategies.

SOLAR-ERA.NET Cofund will bring together 15 national organisations owning and / or managing major solar power research and innovation programmes throughout Europe, covering photovoltaics (PV) and concentrating solar power (CSP). According to the challenges addressed in the work programme on Low Carbon Energy, SOLAR-ERA.NET Cofund has different objectives: • To implement a joint call on subjects of highest priority and European added value in line with the Solar Europe Industry Initiative within the Strategic Energy Technology (SET) Plan • To pool resources and to provide critical mass for transnationally highly relevant and innovative projects • To mobilise 20 MEUR of public funding (national and EC funding), and, together with the resources provided by the private industry sector, a total of 40 MEUR. • To enhance coordination, coherence and networking between national programmes SOLAR-ERA.NET Cofund will contribute to substantial cost reductions of solar power technologies, economic development of the European solar power sector and to reinforce Europe’s strong position in solar power technologies. Reducing technology cost and advancing manufacturing technologies, applications and grid / system integration are essential to increasing the deployment of solar power technologies. This way, SOLAR-ERA.NET Cofund will greatly contribute to: • Acceleration of the time to market by advancing technologies • Affordable, cost-effective and resource-efficient technology solutions • Decarbonisation of the energy system • Sustainable, secure energy supply and completion of the energy internal market • Strengthening the European industrial technology base (growth and jobs in Europe SOLAR-ERA.NET Cofund follows on from SOLAR-ERA.NET project and network and previous PV-ERA-NET network, taking advantage of more than ten years of ERA-NET experience and expertise from all major key stakeholders in the solar research, innovation and industry sector.