Horizon Europe projects
Department of Economics

FOODWISE is designed to accelerate the transition to circular food systems by bridging the persistent gap between environmental awareness and actual consumption behaviour. The project brings together 13 partners from 6 European countries, integrating expertise in behavioural science, social innovation, business transformation, policy, and digital tools. FOODWISE will deliver a suite of evidence-based interventions, toolkits, and digital resources to empower citizens, SMEs, retailers, municipalities, and policymakers to adopt and scale circular practices. The project’s core innovation lies in combining behavioural intelligence and emotional engagement with systemic business and governance transformation. FOODWISE will map consumption patterns and circularity gaps across Europe, develop practical toolkits for retailers and SMEs, and pilot new models for citizen engagement and policy alignment.
Key outputs include the Consumption Pattern Atlas, Circular Retail Playbook, SME Circularity Toolkit, Citizen Engagement Toolkit, and a Circularity Impact Dashboard for monitoring progress and impact. The project will deliver policy recommendations and governance blueprints to public authorities, fostering cross-sector collaboration and replication across regions. By embedding open science, gender analysis, and inclusive engagement, FOODWISE ensures ethical, impactful, and scalable results. Through targeted communication, capacity building, and strategic dissemination, FOODWISE will maximise uptake and long-term impact, contributing to reduced food waste, increased circular consumption, and measurable environmental, economic, and societal benefits. The project will support EU policy objectives, including the Circular Economy Action Plan, Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation, and theGreen Deal, positioning FOODWISE as a reference for systemic change in European food systems.

The EUTOPIA_HEALTH project, a EUTOPIA Alliance initiative, aims to create a novel and innovative framework for the integrative academic management of health-related scientific areas, facilitating changes in the academic landscape within the European research area, through a comprehensive institutional transformation. The project targets three Widening countries (Romania, Slovenia, Portugal) of the alliance, that have traditionally lagged behind in health-related domains, striving to overcome funding and publication disparities, and spearheading academic excellence and innovation in these critical domains. Therefore, the project aims to empower institutional transformation by strengthening health-related R&I management capacity, upgrading and adapting R&I management strategies and policies within Widening HEIs in line with the principles of the European research assessment reform.

NATURE-3B aims to make a significant contribution by developing (i) Nature-Protecting Benchmarks for investors such as pension funds or insurance akin to EU Paris-Aligned Benchmarks (EU PABs), (ii) a Nature-Protecting Bond framework particularly targeted at municipalities and corporates, and (i) six tools for central banks, ESAs & NCAs . As a consortium including three current members of the EU’s Platform on Sustainable Finance including the Head of its Data Science Hub and lead author of EU PABs, NATURE-3B is uniquely positioned to achieve real world impact. Following the success of EU PABs, which grew beyond €100 billion in assets within less than 3 years (European Commission, 2023), the consortium expects that NatureProtecting Benchmarks can exceed €10bn within three years after the launch.

PLANET4Health provides new knowledge and tools on environment degradation and its impact on human animal and ecosystems health. The project results will support policy making process and citizens awareness on sustainable planetary health, climate and environmental policies and adaptation and mitigation strategies to natural hazards. PLANET4health will develop collaborations from a large variety of organizations from the: environmental and climate science, public health, epidemiology, veterinary medicine, social, political and economic science, engineering, law and ethics, and communication, to produce solid knowledge and tools to facilitate learning and practice on the interaction between the natural system and human health. Four tailor-made case studies will be performed:

1. One Health effects of vector-borne diseases
2. air pollution
3. food contamination arising from soil and water contamination
4. mental wellbeing linked to environmental and climate stressors, in different geographical area thanks to the large project network, that will draw universal conclusions and replicable solutions to improve the predictive capability and preparedness

DeliverEEM aims to accelerate the allocation of private finance to energy efficiency investment through an innovative, integrated Energy Efficient Mortgage (EEM) ecosystem, the foundations of which were laid down under the EU-funded Energy Efficient Mortgages Initiative (EEMI). Built around EEM (and consumer loan) products, the ecosystem is intended to deliver a seamless end-to-end customer journey, optimised market interventions and partnerships that can support results and maximise benefits for consumers. . DeliverEEM will prioritise capacity-building and interaction amongst key value chain actors and ensure sustainability, exploitation and replication of Project results through market demonstration and outreach activities to policymakers and regulatory authorities, the consumer credit industry and a global audience.

The overall objective of ESG-UPTAKE is to strengthen EU Member States NCAs’ capacity to monitor and address ESG risks in the financial sector. In particular, the project supports a selected group of NCAs in identifying, monitoring and assessing the impact of ESG risks on their respective supervised entities as well as on the entire financial sector, with a view to adopt appropriate supervisory responses and indirectly contribute to the achievement of the overarching EU and national goals in the area of sustainability. To this aim, ESG-UPTAKE enables the uptake and implementation of a risk-based supervisory approach to assess and mitigate ESG and climate risks, complemented by reporting systems, data and methodologies based on best practices.
Moreover, ESG-UPTAKE aims to strengthen public and private awareness and literacy of the challenges of ESG risks and opportunities for capital allocation into sustainable activities, by supporting the development of crosssectoral capacity building exchanges among NCAs, and dissemination of best practices and lessons.

ACCREU will contribute to the just transition towards climate resilience in the EU, its Member States, and regions, by co-creating and co-delivering with a wide array of stakeholders, new knowledge and actionable insights that connect the challenges of adaptation and mitigation with the multiple and new challenges our society is facing. At the scientific level, it will provide a comprehensive, integrated, co-created, socio-economic evaluation of future climate risk under different adaptation and mitigation scenarios, across European countries, sectors, households, and business types. Specific attention will be paid to non-market impacts on biodiversity, ecosystems, and health. ACCREU will advance models and methods for climate risk assessment, and integrated adaptation decisionmaking.

To ensure effective uptake and long-term use of its results, the co-designed applied case studies will involve EU-level stakeholders, such as Directorate-Generals, the JRC, the EEA, the Mission Adaptation, as well as local practitioners, businesses, and authorities.

The EU Green Deal emphasizes the twin transition: by linking the digital transformation to the green transition, Europe can empower traditional sectors and strengthen its position in global market. In this context, by translating ESG funding needs into consumer products and vice versa, we can create a future-proof data framework for green mortgage financing, crucial for a successful European decarbonisation. ENGAGE aims to provide a solution based on a single data disclosure format for mortgage funding and regulatory purposes encompassing the most relevant European ESG regulations (such as the EU Taxonomy, EU GBS and mortgage credit directive. The ENGAGE objectives: Looking at the different templates and disclosure requirements, we identify the key data fields significant to assess the energy efficiency information of green mortgages. Once the critical fields have been identified, we
will harmonise the definitions with the existing reporting templates. Finally, a standardised data template will be developed in line with the current market standards.

DANUBIUS-IP project brings together 25 experienced partners from 14 countries from across Europe in a consortium with complimentary areas of multi-disciplinary expertise across the freshwater and marine research fields. The project specifically seeks to address recommendations from the recent ESFRI and High-Level Expert Group reports (on DANUBIUS-RI) and make a significant contribution to the expected outcomes and wider impacts of the Horizon Europe Programme. As such the project considers the importance of sustainability of financial commitments, the need to test the funding model and to enhance the visibility of the RI. DANUBIUS-IP will further demonstrate the efficacy of an integrated and interdisciplinary approach embracing a 'river-sea continuum' perspective to fill current gaps in the Research and Innovation landscape to address key societal challenges in these environments impacted by anthropogenic pressures and climate change.

WaterLANDS aims to enable an upscaling of the restoration of wetlands. Socio-economic factors, insufficient stakeholder engagement, lack of government commitment, lack of funding and inadequate exchange of knowledge of restoration methods have all been identified as barriers to successful restoration. Consequently, most restoration has been modest in scale, has occurred mainly where there is a single landowning or responsible organisation, and has often been undertaken principally for reasons of conservation. WaterLANDS will work to overcome these barriers. It includes both Action and Knowledge Sites, the former being the object of restoration upscaling, and the latter a source of best practice experience and knowledge. To provide for local support and sustainability, it will aim for the co-design of restoration with the on-going engagement of communities and stakeholders. It will investigate best practice in ecological restoration which meets both biodiversity and social objectives and for which restoration trajectories are specific to the physical and cultural context of the Action Sites. It will propose supportive governance structures appropriate to this process and to local and national circumstances. It will identify business models, economic incentives and international funding sources and tailor or direct these resources for each site. The project will pull this expertise and knowledge together in a cocreation work package. Process-indicators will be developed to enable on-going assessment of restoration success in terms of ecosystem services, socioeconomic embedding and financial sustainability, to ensure wide-scale restoration which catalyses scalability beyond the life of theWaterLANDS project.

The main goal of CITIES2030 is to create a future proof and effective Urban food system and ecosystem via a connected structure centered in the citizen built on trust. The project commit to work towards the transformation and restructuring of the way systems produce, transport and supply, recycle and reuse food in the 21st century. CITIES2030's vision is to connect short food supply chains, bring together cities and regions, consumers, strategic and complementary industrial partners, civil society, promising start-ups and enterprises, innovators and visionary thinkers, leading universities and research institutions trough vast diversity of disciplines addressing the urban food system and eco system including food science, social science and big data. The objective is to reach via multiple tools delivered by CITIES2030 such as the CRFS Alliance, a community of practice supported by a digital platform, reaching all over Europe and beyond. Cities and regions will improve resilience and sustainability, and their leadership will create short food supply chain and ecosystems enabling local investments, trans-borders and transnational deployment.