According to the final report of the High-Level Expert Group on Key Enabling Technologies photonics has with 480 billion $ by far the biggest market of all key enabling technologies in 2015. If we take a closer look on the various markets within photonics, we see that the sensor market is with 44% by far the biggest individual market (followed by the lighting market with 19%). The ERANET Cofound action PhotonicSensing focuses therefore on the strategically most important areas within the sensing domain: Safety (incl. food safety) Civil security Manufacturing/production Environmental monitoring and Medical. In the safety area the aim is to develop new photonic based sensors which allow for an easy and fast detection of various bacteria as well as to precisely, quickly and efficiently analyze the food composition. The importance of this field is emphasized by the fact that one of the three Horizon prizes of the European Commission (worth 1 million Euro) will be awarded for the development of a food scanner. In civil security a new generation of photonic sensors will help the European law enforcement forces in their fight against crime and terrorism by allowing them to detect hazardous substances earlier and more easily. In production photonic sensors help to improve the quality management and allow for a high level of automation which is necessary to be competitive to the cheap production in Asia. Another crucial area of this call will be the environmental monitoring, which would not be possible without photonic sensing (LIDAR (LIght Detection And Ranging, mid-infrared sensing,…). The challenge in this area is to bring the prices of the detectors down and improve their usability. The health aspects is also be covered by the BiophotonicsPlus (ERANET Plus) and therefore the focus of the ERANET Cofund Action of PhotonicSensing project will be on the sensing part making sure that the topics will be complimentary to the topics covered by the BiophotonicsPlus.

SOLAR-ERA.NET Cofund 2 will bring together 18 national and regional organisations owning and / or managing major solar power research and innovation programmes throughout Europe. They will launch a co-funded and an additional joint call mobilising some 30 MEUR of public funding to support highly innovative transnational RDI projects. SOLAR-ERA.NET Cofund 2 will contribute to substantial cost reductions of solar power technologies, to support the economic development of the European solar power sector and to reinforce Europe’s strong position in solar power technologies. Reducing technology cost, lowering the environmental impact of power production and advancing manufacturing technologies, applications and energy system integration are essential to increasing the deployment of solar power technologies as crucial element of the Low Carbon Energy strategy set out in the Energy Package. This way, SOLAR-ERA.NET Cofund 2 will strongy contribute to achieve the ambitious climate change targets, to sustainable, secure, cost-efficient energy supply and to provide growth and jobs in the solar and related industry sectors providing also a solid technological and industrial base. SOLAR-ERA.NET Cofund 2 will focus on solar power technologies covering both photovoltaics (PV) and concentrating solar power (CSP) / solar thermal electricity (STE) according to the Strategic Energy Technology (SET) Plan and the documents with Declaration on Strategic Targets in the context of an Initiative for Global Leadership in Photovoltaics resp. Concentrated Solar Power and their subsequent Implementation Plans being elaborated by the respective technology groups, i.e. European Technology & Innovation Platforms related Temporary Working Groups. SOLAR-ERA.NET Cofund 2 follows on from the SOLAR-ERA.NET Cofund (started in 2016) and SOLAR-ERA.NET project and network running from 2012 to 2016 and previous PV-ERA-NET network, taking advantage of more than thirteen years of ERA-NET experience.

The objective of FACCE SURPLUS is to strengthen the European Research Area in support of different integrated food and non-food biomass production and transformation systems, especially by organising, implementing and cofunding with the EU a joint call for transnational research projects on the topic of sustainable and resilient agriculture. As this topic falls within the scope of the Strategic Research Agenda (SRA) of the Joint Programming Initiative on Agriculture, Food Security and Climate Change (FACCE–JPI), this ERA-NET Cofund will contribute substantially to the delivery of the FACCE–JPI SRA. It will thereby also contribute to the overall EU objective of building the European Research Area through enhanced cooperation, coordination and alignment of national research programmes. The action FACCE SURPLUS also aims at implementing other joint activities such as organizing workshops, scientific events, clustering of research platforms and infrastructures in the field of food and non-food biomass production and transformation systems, and also additional joint calls without EU cofunding. Launching such joint calls on a regular basis would pave the way to the long term objective of FACCE SURPLUS to establish a self-sustaining joint programme for FACCE-JPI. This will include establishing links with ongoing FACCE-JPI actions as well as related EU and international initiatives. FACCE SURPLUS will also support innovation and value creation from biomass in a sustainable way. The ERA-NET Cofund instrument is appropriate for FACCE-JPI, since it provides additional incentive to participating countries to engage financially on the field of sustainable and resilient agriculture, but also includes the flexibility to implement further activities to contribute to the establishment of a renewable bioeconomy in the ERA.

The overall goal of the proposed Cofund is to strengthen the European Research Area (ERA) in maritime and marine technologies and Blue Growth. The realisation of a European research and innovation agenda needs a broad and systematic cooperation in all areas of waterborne transport, offshore activity, marine resources, maritime security, biotechnologies, desalination, offshore oil & gas, fisheries, aquaculture etc. covering all relevant maritime and marine sectors and regions for a sustainable development of the maritime sector. Research and innovation activities in these fields cannot be tackled either at national levels alone, or solely by a single sector. Coordinated actions are required for the maritime industry to strengthen Europe’s position in this important and complex economic field in a global market. The proposing consortium will organise and co-fund, together with the EU, a joint call for trans-national research projects on different thematic areas of Blue Growth. Furthermore, additional joint activities that go beyond this co-funded call are planned, in order to contribute to the national priorities as well as to the Strategic Research Agenda of JPI Oceans and WATERBORNE. With the cooperation of ERA-NET MARTEC and JPI Oceans, a broader variety of topics with a larger amount of funding will be available for the trans-national projects. Moreover, the focus of development in MarTERA is given to technologies (instead of sectors) due to their potentially large impact to a wide range of application fields. The proposal responds to the topic ERA-NET Cofund on marine technologies of the work programme 2016-2017 of the societal challenge 2 (Food security, sustainable agriculture and forestry, marine and maritime and inland water research and the bio-economy) under Horizon 2020. Thereby it also contributes to the overall EU objective of building the ERA through enhanced cooperation and coordination of national research programmes.

Building on the experience of ERA-MIN FP7 funded project, the objective of the ERA-NET Cofund on Raw Materials (ERA-MIN 2) is to strengthen the coordination of national and regional research programmes in the field of non-energy non-agricultural raw materials by implementing one joint call for proposals resulting in grants to third parties with EU co-funding. In line with the integrated strategy proposed in the EU Raw Materials Initiative and the Strategic Implementation Plan of the European Innovation Partnership on Raw Materials, the ERA-MIN 2 Call topics will address the three segments of the non‐energy non-agricultural raw materials: metallic, industrial and construction minerals and will cover the whole value chain: exploration, extraction, processing/refining, as well as recycling and substitution of critical raw materials. ERA-MIN 2 supports the objectives of the EIP on Raw Materials, particularly in the area of research and innovation co-ordination; improve synergy, co-ordination and coherence between regional, national and EU funding in the relevant research fields through international collaboration; reduce fragmentation of raw materials research and innovation efforts across Europe; improve use of human and financial resources in the area of raw materials research and innovation. As measures to maximise impact, ERA-MIN 2 will cooperate with the existing initiatives, projects and associations, by establishing an effective communication aiming to assure that all dissemination activities, including the promotion and follow up of project results, will reach out to a wider audience of stakeholders, therefore strengthening the raw material community. To further increase its impact and to better fulfil the overarching objectives, ERA-MIN-2 will develop and implement at least two additional joint calls without EU co-funding, in topics of common interest and based on the updated Roadmap provided by CSA VERAM.