On 6 May 2025, SUSTRACK, in collaboration with the European Bioeconomy Network (EuBioNet), organised the “Projects4Future” Mobilisation and Mutual Learning workshop, bringing together 19 Horizon Europe projects working on Standardisation, Certification, Labelling, and Monitoring.
The workshop, supported by an interactive MIRO Board session, enabled projects to exchange experiences, identify shared challenges, and co-develop a set of recommendations to strengthen the circular, regenerative, and competitive bioeconomy in Europe.
The results of this exercise were consolidated into a joint contribution to the public consultation “Towards a circular, regenerative and competitive bioeconomy”. The document, elaborated by SUSTRACK and EuBioNet, was reviewed and enriched with inputs from the following projects: ARGONAUT, BioFairNet, BioINSouth, BIOTRANSFORM, CheMatSustain, COPilot, ESCIB, INNOVATE-EU, Pilots4U, ShapingBio, STAR4BBS, SUSTCERT4BIOBASED (BIOBASEDCERT Cluster), SYMBA, and 3-CO. The document also maps a list of tools and resources developed or in development by the participating projects.
Across multiple EU-funded bioeconomy projects, stakeholders flag “Insufficient and not harmonised data and methodologies” as a common challenge. In particular, a coherent, multi-scale data baseline is needed to monitor circular bioeconomy performance consistently, from EU level down to regions with varying capacities, and to incorporate new indicators that capture critical transition metrics. Additionally, the inclusion of additional indicators (and related procedures of assessment) to monitor specific aspects of the bioeconomy transition has been suggested. Similarly, despite the efforts of several EU-funded projects, the participants still believe that the tools developed are insufficient, not harmonised and fragmented, jeopardising their adoption and exploitation. To respond to this challenge, it is important to integrate and harmonise these tools in an interoperable, unique solution, as well as to promote awareness, recognition and their uptake by the EC, policymakers and stakeholders. To address these gaps, it is recommended that the EC creates the right framework conditions for ensuring continuity and sustainability of project results by supporting coordination and support actions to map, integrate and make available existing tools produced by various projects for the intended beneficiaries. This process could be facilitated by the provision of support services to assist and empower the stakeholders in the adoption of the methodologies and tools developed by various projects through awareness and capacity building activities tailored to the specificities of their regions and sectors. Moreover, strengthening the bioeconomy innovation ecosystem is essential. The Commission can support this by establishing regional “innovation brokers” or hubs that facilitate cross-project collaboration, knowledge exchange, and co-development of foresight exercises informing future policy and industrial agendas. These so-called “ecosystem enablers” would also champion scale-up services and proactively link innovation with public and private funding, mentoring, and regulatory guidance. All the above-mentioned actions will contribute to inform a harmonised policy framework and promote a more systemic policy package, reducing inefficiencies and promoting policy synergies, towards a just, sustainable and competitive growth.
Read the full document here!