PARC is an EU-wide research and innovation partnership programme to support EU and national chemical risk assessment and risk management bodies with new data, knowledge, methods, networks and skills to address current, emerging and novel chemical safety challenges. PARC will facilitate the transition to next generation risk assessment to better protect human health and the environment, in line with the Green Deal?s zero-pollution ambition for a toxic free environment and will be an enabler for the future EU ?Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability?. It builds in part on the work undertaken and experience acquired in past and on-going research and innovation actions, but goes beyond by its vocation to establish an EU-wide risk assessment hub of excellence. To contribute to several expected impacts of destination 2 ?Living and working in a health-promoting environment?, PARC will organise the activities to reach three specific objectives: - An EU-wide sustainable cross-disciplinary network to identify and agree on research and innovation needs and to support research uptake into regulatory chemical risk assessment. - Joint EU research and innovation activities responding to identified priorities in support of current regulatory risk assessment processes for chemical substances and to emerging challenges. - Strengthening existing capacities and building new transdisciplinary platforms to support chemical risk assessment. The Partnership brings together Ministries and national public health and risk assessment agencies, as well as research organisations and academia from almost all of EU Member States. Representatives of Directorates-General of the EC and EU agencies involved in the monitoring of chemicals and the assessment of risks are also participating. PARC will meet the needs of risk assessment agencies to better anticipate emerging risks and respond to the challenges and priorities of the new European policies.

The SPP Regions project is aimed at promoting strong networking and collaboration at both the European and sub-national regional level on sustainable and innovative procurement (SPP/PPI), to help promote and embed capacity building and knowledge transfer. At the regional level networking will be promoted to build capacities and transfer skills in sustainable and innovative procurement implementation, and to collaborate directly on tendering for eco-innovative solutions. New networks will be established, or existing networks strengthened in 7 European regions (Copenhagen, Rotterdam, Torino, Bristol, Barcelona, West France and Gabrovo). Networking activities will include an intensive capacity building programme and collaboration on at least 6 tenders per region - 42 in total. At the European level a Sustainable Procurement and Innovation Network will be launched, expanding on the existing Procura+ Campaign. In-depth research will be conducted into European best practice relating to a series of key SPP/PPI topics (market engagement, life cycle costing, output/performance-based specifications, circular procurement) by a series of experts in consultation with network participants. A series of European seminars and expert workshops will be organised, together with an ongoing webinar series, and the annual presentation of a PPI award for European best practice.

Water is central to all human activities, to all components of the EU Green Deal and to several UN SDGs. The Water4All Partnership aims at enabling water security for all on the long term through boosting systemic transformations and changes across the entire research – water innovation pipeline, fostering the matchmaking between problem owners and solution providers. It gathers more than 70 partners, R&I funders, environment ministries, local authorities, European, national and regional-scale networks, research performing organisations. It will collaborate with other relevant R&I initiatives. Water4All proposes a portfolio of multi-national, cross-sectoral activities, targeting a variety of actors, intending to generate the following outputs: - Strengthen the water R&I collaboration at European and international levels, across at least 31 countries, notably through Joint Transnational Calls - Coordinate and leverage the activities of the Water R&I community - Support and promote the demonstration and access to market of innovative solutions - Produce, share and better communicate water-related knowledge & data, from local to global scales - Enhance talent development of water R&I professionals - Foster capacity development and life-long training of water policy-makers, stakeholders and civil society - Design & implement approaches for participatory development of innovation Water4All will run its activities across 7 themes of its strategic agenda: water for circular economy; water for ecosystems and biodiversity; sustainable water management; water and health; water infrastructure; international cooperation; water governance. Water4All’s outputs will contribute to: - Deliver sound knowledge, tools and evidence basis on water for policy- & decision-making - Improve consideration of water impacts in all relevant policies - Enhance the field/market use of innovative solutions to water challenges - Increase citizens’ awareness and engagement for an inclusive water

The Sustainable Blue Economy Partnership (SBEP) aims to design, steer and support a just and inclusive transition to a regenerative, resilient and sustainable blue economy, boosting the transformation needed towards a climate-neutral, sustainable, productive and competitive EU by 2030. The SBEP will deliver solutions to strengthen EU and international science-policy interfaces in marine- and maritime-related domains of the EU Green Deal and Digital Europe strategies through aligning national, regional and EU R&I priorities bringing together science, industry, policy and society. It will also contribute to accelerate the post-pandemic recovery and resilience. In line with the EC new approach for a sustainable blue economy in the EU, the SBEP rolls-out impact pathways to: catalyse the transformation of ocean economy value chains; deliver ocean knowledge and impact-driven R&I solutions; cooperate to respond to international, EU and national regulations, recommendations and policy strategies; contribute to the social and digital transition by developing innovative governance frameworks that benefit coastal communities, including by reinforcing skills and enhance ocean observation capacity contributing to EOOS and GEOSS. Together with the EC, 59 partners from 25 countries (MS and AC) in the first phase that raised to 75 partners from 30 countries (MS, AC and TC) in the seoncd phase, will join an unprecedent effort to pool R&I investments, aligning programmes at pan-European scale. The ambition is to launch 6 co-funded calls and implement relevant additional activities such as thematic annual programming, alignemnt of monitoring programmes, sharing of research infrastructures and developing portfolios of projects, over a seven-year timeframe to support R&I joint programming on thematic priority areas of interventions stemming from a co-designed SRIA. The SBEP will also identify additional mechanisms for alignment and look for further economic support of R&I programs leveraging other funding and finance streams. In parallel, a long-term structuring ambition will support the creation of a community of practice, fostering co-creation, coordinating all relevant initiatives at sea-basins/Atlantic ocean level and further promoting the EU blue economy at global level.

The vision of EU-ToxRisk is to drive a paradigm shift in toxicology towards an animal-free, mechanism-based integrated approach to chemical safety assessment. The project will unite all relevant disciplines and stakeholders to establish: i) pragmatic, solid read-across procedures incorporating mechanistic and toxicokinetic knowledge; and ii) ab initio hazard and risk assessment strategies of chemicals with little background information. The project will focus on repeated dose systemic toxicity (liver, kidney, lung and nervous system) as well as developmental/reproduction toxicity. Different human tiered test systems are integrated to balance speed, cost and biological complexity. EU-ToxRisk extensively integrates the adverse outcome pathway (AOP)-based toxicity testing concept. Therefore, advanced technologies, including high throughput transcriptomics, RNA interference, and high throughput microscopy, will provide quantitative and mechanistic underpinning of AOPs and key events (KE). The project combines in silico tools and in vitro assays by computational modelling approaches to provide quantitative data on the activation of KE of AOP. This information, together with detailed toxicokinetics data, and in vitro-in vivo extrapolation algorithms forms the basis for improved hazard and risk assessment. The EU-ToxRisk work plan is structured along a broad spectrum of case studies, driven by the cosmetics, (agro)-chemical, pharma industry together with regulators. The approach involves iterative training, testing, optimization and validation phases to establish fit-for-purpose integrated approaches to testing and assessment with key EU-ToxRisk methodologies. The test systems will be combined to a flexible service package for exploitation and continued impact across industry sectors and regulatory application. The proof-of-concept for the new mechanism-based testing strategy will make EU-ToxRisk the flagship in Europe for animal-free chemical safety assessment.