Investments on digitalisation affect personal, political, societal, environmental and economic processes across the globe and have enormous potential to radically change almost all sectors in the coming decades, from agriculture to industry and finance, from education to health, democracy and human rights. They will also influence the success of the implementation of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Digitalisation is being promoted heavily with limited reflection on potential negative impacts and consumer protection. Internet based services render the service systems even opaquer for consumers, and are prone to technical failure and cybercrime with irreversible damages for individuals and societies. PRODIGEES (Promoting Research on Digitalisation in Emerging Powers and Europe towards Sustainable Development) promotes international collaboration and sharing of knowledge on (global) governance and the conditions to shape digitalisation towards the Sustainable Development Goals in the 2030 Agenda. The major objective of the project is to generate a better understanding of digital transformation processes and exponential technologies and their impact on sustainable development in different world regions and shape technology at an early stage of development (Collingridge 1980) . With the aim to exploit complementary competences and combine various disciplines and perspectives, PRODIGEES focuses on the exchange of ideas between academic institutions that deal with sustainability and digitalisation questions in the European Union (Italy, Germany) on the one hand, and emerging powers from the Global South (Brazil, India, Indonesia, Mexico and South Africa) on the other. In this way, the project allows for sharing and comparing experiences from countries that are of greatest importance for the achievement of the SDGs, and for successful global governance in the digital age.

The action ‘Differentiation: Clustering Excellence’ (DiCE) establishes a large research network designed to support policy decisions on EU differentiation. This CSA creates a unique cluster of excellence by bringing together, through their coordinators, the three successful H2020 sister projects on differentiation (EU3D, EU IDEA, InDivEU), which is amplified by the involvement of the TEPSA network and a strategy for including other experts plus UNEXE. DiCE’s overarching objective is to ensure that state-of-the-art research on differentiation is properly translated into policy-relevant advice and made readily accessible to policy-makers at European, national and regional levels of governance and society, better preparing the EU for future differentiation scenarios. The open and inclusive network will become the ‘Who’s Who’ of researchers working on differentiation and the dynamics of European integration. The three projects consist of 38 partner institutions (22 universities, 15 think tanks, 1 media partner) from across Europe involving more than 50 leading scholars and experts on differentiation. TEPSA’s presence in 35 European countries further enlarges the projects’ geographical scope. DiCE pursues a number of measurable, realistic and achievable objectives that are consistent with the call’s expectation of networking, knowledge exploitation and dissemination, and impact on EU policy-making. DiCE will: (a) create a network of experts on differentiation within and beyond Europe in an open and inclusive manner; (b) undertake a comprehensive stock-taking and synthesis of research including the production of a differentiation manual and portal; (c) map, synthesize and develop future scenarios on differentiation and test them at a scenario marathon; (d) improve the sustainability through a series of measures, including a link to Horizon Europe by working on concrete proposals for a fully-fledged think tank on differentiation with funding to be requested from the next Framework Programme.

Currently, many processes, procedures, systems and equipment for information management and exchange in EU civilian external actions are in place, but these are often used in an incoherent way and lack interoperability, inhibiting CSDP entities and other stakeholders to build a common understanding of crisis management. CIVILEX aims to identify, characterise and model the communication and information systems in use within the EU Civilian missions, understand the stakeholders’ requirements and provide possible solutions to tackle by a future interoperable Situational Awareness, Information Exchange and Operational Control Platform. This would allow to constitute a more coherent and interoperable platform. As a result, common understanding and situational awareness about crisis management in EU civilian external actions will be enhanced since CIVILEX paves the way for such an infrastructure. The envisaged platform should facilitate the engagement of EU actors. This can include CSDP missions, EU Delegations, ECHO offices and Member State Embassies, but also UN offices and other non-EU actors. While the focus is on the civilian chain of command, it should also consider certain connections and overlaps with military actors. The need for coherence and interoperability is not new, nor is it a purely technical challenge. Clearly, there are certain legal, policy, institutional and human elements that function as facilitators and constrainers for better information exchange. CIVILEX, therefore, adds an innovative dimension by researching and helping to clarify the wider policy, institutional and operational issues of ICT systems in the context of CSDP and EU external action. The project would take a hybrid approach, aiming both for a technical solution for information exchange (a platform that stimulates low-level, secure ad-hoc communities of interest) and for institutional changes (leading to agreements on exchange formats for civilian parties).