“Just Fashion”, is set to develop a portfolio of approaches to support and accelerate climate transition in the fashion industry, by providing businesses in the partner countries with a reference framework and tools to shift their production methods, internal procedures and final products towards more sustainable models that are lower carbon, circular and socially inclusive. Just Fashion aims to address this problem by (1) mapping the current state of fashion and sustainability in Europe, (2) mapping and evaluating tools and on circular business models (3) create a process of interventions to support these tools and support existing networks in preparing MSMEs and SMEs for the new legislation on the European Green deal. 4 central elements of the projects: 1) Development of a new sustainability index as well as testing and refining several circular business model tools that are already in use in different areas and are already being tested in these countries. 2) Run 6 pilot cases from different regions focussing on different aspects of circularity (end of life, materials, zero waste prototyping, circular business models, recycling techniques, transparency/traceability, ...). 3) Update current instruments and tools in transformation & mitigation 4) Develop the necessary instruments to better prepare (M)SME's for European Green deals in terms of policy regulations (through buidling an AI support tool).

Overarching aim of the ERA_FABRIC project is to define, structure, populate and validate the “interconnected knowledge space” foreseen by the EU ERA Hubs initiative (COM 2020 628 final). Three distinct, and intertwined, dimensions, all of them relevant for policy making, are adopted as a structuring principle for the community to be built and cultivated during the project: 1) ERA Hubs as Knowledge Ecosystems: fostering the dynamic interaction of R&D and innovation actors at regional and multiregional levels, taking into account the different knowledge and cultural contexts and the alignment of research foci and industrial needs; 2) ERA Hubs as Multi Stakeholder Platforms: bringing together the representatives of the various involved interest groups in a seamless and uninterrupted discussion and deliberation on strategic priorities, actions and results evaluation; 3) ERA Hubs as a Policy Co Creation Toolbox: a transformative set of measures and tools operating in a “middle ground” needing to be configured as a distinct space from both the EU and the MS/Regional levels, historically presided over by “ad hoc” sets of instruments (e.g. Framework Programmes for R&I, Structural and Investment Funds, Interregional and Cross Border Cooperation Programmes). It is the consortium’s vision and assumption that the 3 above dimensions should be presided over and made interoperable, in order for the ERA Hubs initiative to become path breaking and impactful at broad EU level. ERA_FABRIC is designed by leading European actors in the domain of regional development. The 11 partners represent 8 Member States and 1 Associated State. With the addition of the letters of interest gathered before the proposal presentation, almost half of EU27 territorial coverage has been reached.

SmartAgriHubs is dedicated to accelerate the digital transformation of the European agri-food sector. It will consolidate, activate and extend the current ecosystem by building a network of Digital Innovation Hubs (DIHs) that will boost the uptake of digital solutions by the farming sector. This will be achieved by integrating technology and business support in a local one-stop-shop approach involving all regions and all relevant players in Europe. The heart of the project is formed by 28 flagship innovation experiments demonstrating digital innovations in agriculture, facilitated by DIHs from 9 Regional Clusters including all European member states. Concurrently, SmartAgriHubs will improve the maturity of innovation services of DIHs so that digital innovations will be replicated across Europe and widely adopted by European farmers. A lean multi-actor approach focusing on user acceptability, stakeholder engagement and sustainable business models will boost technology and market readiness levels and bring user adoption to the next level. This will be enhanced by synergetic effects between SmartAgriHubs and RIS3, since SmartAgriHubs will work in lock step with European regions to maximize the return of European investments, including regional structural funds and private capital. Open Calls with a total budget of ±6 M€ will expand the network and ensure that technological developments and emerging challenges of the agri-food sector are incorporated in the DIH service portfolio. SmartAgriHubs’ inclusive structure and ambitious targets will bring the entire European ecosystem together, connecting the dots to ensure global leadership for Europe in the AgTech market. The consortium, led by Wageningen Research and other partners of previous key projects such as IoF2020, FIWARE, S3P Agri-Food and I4MS, will leverage the existing ecosystem and guarantee a maximum ROI for European taxpayers and a vital agri-food sector producing adequate and safe food for future generations.

Social entrepreneurship has been identified as a key feature of the EU social market economy, social enterprises (SEs) contributes to the emergence and expansion of new market-based business models seeking ways to contribute to economic and societal values. SEs also have great potential for developing social innovations to improve quality of life, satisfy new needs, or public sector restructuring. Nonetheless, the concepts of “social economy” and “social innovation” are little known or misunderstood and it seems to be considered rarely as an important factor for business, especially for young people. On the other hand social start-ups encounter more difficulties in reaching the economic sustainability.The project INN@SE rely on the idea that a successful approach to overcome such challenges, can be represented by the open innovation methodology based on a cross-sectoral collaborative process. Thus, the project partnership is created by organizations from countries with different level of know-how on SE (Poland, Italy, North Macedonia, Jordan), representing sectors with different approaches to the topic (higher education, research, NGO). All partners are highly specialized in activities related to young people empowerment, training, social economy research, and start-ups development and the diverse knowledge, experience and skills that each partner imputes to the project, should be valued and recognized as essential to ensure the success and sustainability of the joint efforts.Taking context and needs into consideration, partners have identified the following objectives which derive directly from the 3 target needs areas (skills & capacity building, orienteering & networking, awareness raising):1. To disseminate entrepreneurial mindset and skills among young people at a broader EU level; to provide aspiring young social entrepreneurs with a clear toolkit to start up; 2. To facilitate access of young people and youth staff to information regarding grant, training and mentoring opportunities and tools at local and international level; to promote networking among young SEs; 3. To promote an EU culture of SE among society, rehabilitating entrepreneurship through social entrepreneurship, with a special attention to the contribution represented “by” and “to” young people; to raise awareness among young people as active citizens regarding social, environmental, and diversity challenges of EU communities, and how SE can face them; to promote the visibility among key stakeholders of social businesses and the importance of social innovation and social impact.Target groups to be addressed:- young people (18-35), especially running/involved in SEs or with an interest in doing so – 280 participants directly involved in project activities;- youth workers, trainers, teachers, business coaches and other professionals (and related organizations) supporting and promoting entrepreneurship among young people, relevant stakeholders – at least 70 participants directly involved in project activities.Through a 3 project phases (preparation – implementation – exploitation), the partners will elaborate a joint innovative methodology based on the transfer of the open innovation and co-design approach. 4 intellectual outputs linked to 3 main need areas will be created:1. Inn@SE Youth SE Research Study - a multi-sided analysis in the field of youth SE to define the model of supporting SE of young people, spot weaknesses and strong points and design a training scheme both in the field of training for social entrepreneurs already working and for others who will like to develop their professional careers in this sector.2. INN@SE Youth SE Educational Game – to provide young people with innovative and attractive way to learn about social entrepreneurship.3. INN@SE Young People Training Program & Toolkit - to provide aspiring young social entrepreneurs with a clear and flexible toolkit to start up, with a particular attention to the financial sustainability topic.4. Inn@SE Services for Youth SE - innovative youth SE services and policy recommendation developed through service co-design and design thinking methodologies to better empower and support young social entrepreneurs.Moreover, 3 multiplier events (“Innovathons” which follow the hackathon methodology) will be organized to disseminate project results, promote their exploitation and involve young people at local level.The ultimate purposes or the expected impacts of the project are to contribute to strengthening the offer to enhance professional skills of young people and to promote effectiveness and innovation in the SE development.Holistic approach and multi-sided analysis will ensure the transnational applicability and relatively easy transferability. All materials and training tools will be available on an open source platform, in order to reach the maximum results in terms of visibility, dissemination and access to any indirect beneficiary interested in youth SE.

KITT4SME specifically targets European SMEs and mid-caps to provide them with scope-tailored and industry-ready hardware, software and organisational kits, delivered as a modularly customisable digital platform, that seamlessly introduce artificial intelligence in their production systems. Uptake of the resulting packages and of the provided services is strongly supported by the clear characterisation and market readiness of the individual components as well as by the platform grounding on the already established RAMP marketplace. Leverage on the network of Digital Innovation Hubs, three of which are represented in the consortium, ensure that KITT4SME are widely distributed to a wide audience of companies in Europe. Seamless adoption of the customised kits is made possible by a Powered by FIWARE infrastructure that flawlessly combine factory systems (such as MES and ERP), IoT sensors and wearable devices, robots, collaborative robots and other factory data sources with functional modules capable to trigger data-driven value creation.