Collective projects

Ensuring that research and innovation in bio-based products and processes is not only excellent, but also relevant and responsive to the needs of all actors is important, not least in ensuring the uptake of results. Surveys show that consumers and citizens in general have little awareness and knowledge of bio-based products (BBP). To improve market uptake of bio-based products, shape future research in BBP science, technology and innovation and meet the views and expectations of society, there is a need for a broad, inclusive assessment of the challenges and opportunities at hand.

The interaction between people, oceans, seas and coasts is a broad domain with significant impacts on human health and well-being. However, it remains fragmented, poorly understood and underexploited. As coastal populations grow worldwide, not only due to permanent dwellers but also due to increasingly larger number of tourists, the determinants and impacts of this link between oceans and people become more relevant. On the one hand, the seas provide benefits namely through food, feed and positive impacts on overall wellness.

In its "Strategic Agenda for the Union in Times of Change" for the period 2014 to 2019, the European Council identified the need to "maximize the EU's clout" in global affairs, notably by "ensuring consistency between Member States' and EU foreign policy goals and by improving coordination and coherence between the main fields of EU external action, such as trade (…) development and economic policies". One area which definitely promises maximised EU clout in global affairs is trade.

Migration is a central and common phenomenon in human history. The international migrant population in Europe[1] is expected to increase in the future, due to economic and demographic factors, political unrest, conflicts and climate change. One aspect that has become increasingly clear in recent years is that, if the EU wants to successfully manage immigration flows at home, it needs to strengthen its cooperation with third countries of origin and transit of migrants, by fully addressing the root causes of migration and exploiting the potential of migration as a development enabler.

The European Union's neighbouring regions are, in various ways and for a number of reasons, in turmoil. To the East, the Eastern partnership has been called into question, especially by the long-standing crisis in Ukraine and difficult and uncertain relations with Russia. In the South-East, the EU's relationship with Turkey has increasingly come under strain, while at Turkey's border the conflict in Syria and the ravage of Islamic State armies have created high degrees of instability. In the Western Balkans, the accession processes of several candidate countries remain challenging.

In-spite of its undisputable importance as a region located at a strategic crossroad to the Far East, as a rich reservoir of natural resources and as an area of traditional trade relations with Europe, Central Asia has been rather neglected by the major global players in the post-Soviet era. Only in more recent years, the political and economic developments in the five countries of the region - Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan - have received more attention.

Specific Challenge

The growing attention given to research and innovation over the past decades has resulted in increased amounts of public funding being channelled to research and innovation, but also to a variety of policies and funding programmes being put in place in Europe, in order to maximise the quality and impact of this funding.

FET projects often generate new and sometimes unexpected opportunities for commercial or societal application. This topic aims at funding further innovation related work (i.e. activities which were not scheduled to be funded by the original project) to verify and substantiate the innovation potential of ideas arising from FET funded projects and to support the next steps in turning them into a genuine social or economic innovation.