Agriculture soils are being heavily affected by climate change and are highly vulnerable to degradation and desertification, particularly in the Mediterranean and southern regions of the EU. If climate change is not mitigated, yields of crops like wheat, maize and sugar beet could decrease in southern EU by up to 50 % by 2050. Although agriculture has been signalled as a significant contributor to GHG emissions (13% of EU total emissions), it is also one of the sectors with the biggest potential to adapt to and mitigate climate change. In this sense, Carbon Farming appears as a promising solution for soils’ health and for the sustainability of EU agriculture. LILAS4SOILS will put in place 5 Living Labs (LLs) in 6 countries to co-create the adoption of Carbon Farming solutions within farmers, agri-food businesses, researchers and local authorities, and implement Carbon Farming Practices -CFPs- (peatland management, agroforestry, livestock and manure management, and nutrient management, maintaining soil organic carbon) in 85-100 demo-sites. CFPs impact on soil carbon sequestration and environmental co-benefits will be assessed through the adoption of homogeneous Monitoring, Reporting and Verification (MRV) technologies. The 5-year project involves 24 expert partners, +25 stakeholders will part of each LL for interdisciplinary knowledge exchange (20 co-creation workshops to be held) and +71 farmers will be engaged in CFPs implementation, ensuring the multi-actor approach. 10 training workshops (supported by 21 materials), 10 policy workshops (supported by 2 sets of recommendations per LL), 8 cross-fertilisation and synergies workshops and 2 replication workshops within other regions in EU are envisaged as part of the project's focus on knowledge transfer. Through directed Open Calls, LILAS4SOILS will encourage the participation of 35-50 additional farmers and support the testing of 15 MRV innovative technologies that overcome the limitations of the conventional ones.

NATI00NS will assist the EU Mission 'A Soil Deal for Europe’ during most of its first "induction and pilot" phase (2021 – 2025), acting as a messenger and conveying awareness-raising messages to national and regional stakeholders, providing access to capacity building materials and information, spurring the discussions on the best Living-Lab (LL) setups to address regional soil needs, and fostering early matchmaking for cross-regional LL clusters. Eventually, the smooth execution of the project will be reflected in the number of high-quality applications received in the first open calls and the funding of the first two waves of LL projects, which can lead the way for the systemic change boosted by the Soil Mission. The takeaways will be also useful for upcoming activities in the Soil Mission's second "expansion and innovation" phase (2025 – 2030) when the rest of the waves of LLs will be selected. NATI00NS' consortium has been carefully selected and formed with the intention of gathering and covering all the necessary expertise needed to ensure the successful execution of the work plan and achievement of the project's objectives. This will, in turn, allow the partners to contribute to the Soil Mission’s expected impact on society, following the achievement of its objectives and goal. On the one hand, the project is counting on top experts on soil science and the co-participatory place-based innovation approaches to be put in place in the Living Labs. On the other hand, NATI00NS is granting adequate national outreach in all EU Member States and Horizon Europe Associated Countries through its 14 partners, its Key network group representatives and all their networks (i.e., BIOEAST, European Network of Living Labs, Soil Health National Hubs, ERIAFF, etc.).

If food loss and waste (FLW) were a country, it would be the third leading cause of greenhouse gas emissions. FLW also burdens waste management systems and exacerbates food insecurity, , contributing significantly to the three global crises of climate change, nature and biodiversity loss, and pollution and waste. PRECIOUS, an transdisciplinary alliance of 20 entities from 11 EU countries, believes that reliable data on the environmental impacts of FLW is crucial for accelerating EU progress towards climate targets and reducing environmental impacts (including biodiversity) across the food supply chain. The project´s collective understanding is that the challenge goes beyond measuring the amount of food saved or CO2 emissions. When food is wasted, valuable and limited resources such as water, land use, and energy are lost, while 8.9% of the worldwide population is suffering from hunger accordingto FAO, therefore, depleting the planet's natural resources. It is critical to broaden our understanding of the issue to transform the food system and raise public awareness that motivate change. PRECIOUS aims to contribute to the transformation of food systems by addressing existing data gaps and developing a unified and openly accessible evaluation framework to quantify the economic, environmental, and social impacts of strategies to reduce FLW, taking into account potential rebound effects. The project will engage stakeholders from 2 Use Cases (Spain and Greece) and 3 Co-creation and Replication Nodes (Poland, Lithuania, Hungary) to address systemic causes across geographical boundaries. The project aims to induce a fundamental change in attitudes and behaviours towards food consumption and disposal through collaborative efforts and innovative methods, fostering a more just and sustainable EU food system.

Entrepreneurship is crucial for economic growth and societal progress, yet women remain underrepresented in the field, accounting for less than a third of entrepreneurs in EU. This under-representation not only highlights inequality but also limits EU's potential to tackle pressing challenges, such as the digital, green, resilience transition, and recovery from the pandemic. Deep tech sectors are even less balanced, and investment for women-led companies remains less than 2% of the total To address this gender gap, Women TechEU will bridge collaboration between the European Commission and pan-European deep tech women-led startups to create a more gender-balanced entrepreneurship ecosystem. Built on the exisisting foundations of the EIC Women TechEU initiative, our consortium will scale this iniatiative with a clear perspective towards long-term sustainability We will invest 12M€ in equity-free grants to 160 women-led deep tech companies and additional support services in a programme enhancing current EIC BAS to which we will link The consortium is comprised by partners covering all the expertise and geographies needed to reach over 15000 women entrepreneurs in deep tech from all over Europe. Led by EIT Manufacturing, it is strengthened with the participation of other KICs from EIT like Health, Food and Climate, leveraging the power of their network and landmark events. We also count with the expertise from Sploro in cascade funding programmes. Across Limits will guide the communication and dissemination activities as well as link in the service delivery with Awaken Hub, who will coordinate an effort to evaluate over 1500 experts in 4 different open calls. The consortium is complemented by major networks of investors and women entrepreneurs like EBAN, AFAEMME, or FI Values and purpose driven we will search for sustainability and major impact of the initiative during the project and beyond even proposing a PPP structure to further exploit the project results.

In line with the Zero Pollution action plan, the “Farm to Fork” strategy and the new Fertilising Product Regulation, NOVAFERT will demonstrate the technical, economic, and environmental feasibility and safe use of a wide portfolio of at least 25 alternative fertilising products, containing recovered nutrients from all 6 different waste streams mentioned in the call, with the goal of facilitating the replacement of synthetic and mineral fertilisers. NOVAFERT gathers 9 multidisciplinary actors to demonstrate the technical, economic, and environmental feasibility and safe use of alternative fertilising products. The environmental aspect will be covered by developing guidelines and a consensual method for environmental assessment of alternative fertilising products. The economic aspect will be covered by co-creating novel, circular and green business models. As such, NOVAFERT will reduce environmental impacts and external nutrient dependence in agriculture in 6 representative countries from Eastern, Western, Northern, Southern and Central Europe. NOVAFERT will map existing alternative fertilising products across Europe and develop an Atlas of the nutrient-oriented living labs, and also will support the development of sustainable local value chains. By regionally contextualizing and interlinking all main recovering technologies and products, and technically connecting all value chains and key relevant stakeholders in 7 regional working groups and 7-10 lighthouse demo’s, NOVAFERT will foster the sustainable use and management of alternative fertilizing products in Europe. Moreover, NOVAFERT will develop a portfolio of support policies and legislative instruments suitable for local deployment in the EU regions through 7 specific action plans and 4 policy briefs. Thereby NOVAFERT will bring together the necessary information for efficient and safe utilizing of alternative fertilising products to help decision-making on valorisation employed in nutrient recovery.