The European Commission recently launched the call for proposals for ‘Raising awareness of circular and sustainable bioeconomy in support of Member States to develop bioeconomy strategies and/or action plans’. The call has been published under Horizon Europe, the new EU’s research and innovation programme, which allocates a budget of €95.5 billion for 2021-2027.

The call is part of the Cluster 6 ‘Food, Bioeconomy, Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment’, which provides opportunities to enhance and balance environmental, social and economic goals and to set human economic activities on a path towards sustainability.

The European Green Deal, the Commission’s growth strategy, has set Europe on its path to be the first climate neutral continent by 2050 and achieve an inclusive green transition. One of the seven core pathways to deliver on climate neutrality is the bioeconomy. The updated EU bioeconomy strategy has highlighted the relevance of developing national bioeconomy strategies and action plans to deploy a sustainable and circular bioeconomy across Europe.

To date, there are still Member States, including many from Central and Eastern Europe that do not have a national bioeconomy strategy and/or action plan despite their high biomass resource base and new bioeconomy potential.

Published within the Work Programme 2021-2022, the call for proposals ‘Raising awareness of circular and sustainable bioeconomy in support of Member States to develop bioeconomy strategies and/or action plans’ is aimed at supporting Member States to develop strategies by improving knowledge and raising awareness of a sustainable, circular bioeconomy, its challenges and opportunities as well as experiences made elsewhere.

Moreover, the topic should help to bring together national stakeholders in deploying and fostering the bioeconomy related research and innovation developments by engaging local stakeholders into the participation in macro-regional and European thematic networks and into building the common European Research Area.

The focus of the topic should be two-fold: reaching out to decision makers and public administrators in different ministries as well as to a wide range of stakeholders crucial for the development of the national strategies and bioeconomy deployment across Europe. These stakeholders could consist for example of investors, industries, SMEs, feedstock providers (e.g. waste, side streams, farmers, foresters, fishermen). It is also relevant to cooperate and establish links with relevant existing initiatives such as the BIOEAST, EUBIONET, BBI JU and the Circular Bio-based Europe (CBE) Partnership.

Projects are expected to contribute to:

• Increase awareness of decision makers and public administrators in different ministries about the various bioeconomy sectors, the role of the bioeconomy in the EU policies, the benefits of the bioeconomy;
• Improve inter-ministerial interaction and engagement in Member States that are developing or are preparing to develop their Strategy and/or Action Plan.

The total indicative budget for the topic is EUR 4.00 million.

The deadline to submit the proposal is 6 October.

All official documents can be found here