The BioMedical Research and Innovation (R&I) sector is characterised by specific challenges, emphasising the need for intersectional gender equality interventions with the potential to benefit health and wellbeing in society. The INCLUDE project drives institutional change towards gender equality and inclusiveness by co-designing, implementing, and evaluating innovative measures to advance Gender Equality Plans (GEPs) within seven public BioMedical Research Performing Organisations (RPOs) and one private Research and Technology Organization (RTO) using intersectional and intersectoral approaches. A geographically inclusive consortium covers 2 EU Member States and 6 Widening countries, in Northern, Eastern, Southern, and Western Europe, with more and less advanced policy frameworks. INCLUDE conducts a comprehensive analysis of GEPs and data collection practices already in place, identifying areas for improvement and potential challenges. The analysis, alongside a mapping of good practices and tools, and the identification of the competencies and learning needs of implementing partners, will inform the co-design of inclusive GEP pilot actions to improve intersectional gender equality. Substantial operationalization of intersectionality is enshrined in the consortium composition comprising scholars and activists who possess significant knowledge, expertise, and specialised tools for implementing an intersectional approach. Tailored training programs and collaborative learning initiatives, the establishment of thematic hubs, a mentoring scheme, and study visits will ensure that internal capacities are fostered, and knowledge sharing is promoted. INCLUDE places emphasis on the long-term sustainability of an intersectional approach to GEPs through the elaboration of detailed sustainability plans and the strengthening of partnerships with the local innovation ecosystems, while promoting and multiplying networking efforts through the INCLUDE toolkit, CoP and Manifesto.

PARC is an EU-wide research and innovation partnership programme to support EU and national chemical risk assessment and risk management bodies with new data, knowledge, methods, networks and skills to address current, emerging and novel chemical safety challenges. PARC will facilitate the transition to next generation risk assessment to better protect human health and the environment, in line with the Green Deal?s zero-pollution ambition for a toxic free environment and will be an enabler for the future EU ?Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability?. It builds in part on the work undertaken and experience acquired in past and on-going research and innovation actions, but goes beyond by its vocation to establish an EU-wide risk assessment hub of excellence. To contribute to several expected impacts of destination 2 ?Living and working in a health-promoting environment?, PARC will organise the activities to reach three specific objectives: - An EU-wide sustainable cross-disciplinary network to identify and agree on research and innovation needs and to support research uptake into regulatory chemical risk assessment. - Joint EU research and innovation activities responding to identified priorities in support of current regulatory risk assessment processes for chemical substances and to emerging challenges. - Strengthening existing capacities and building new transdisciplinary platforms to support chemical risk assessment. The Partnership brings together Ministries and national public health and risk assessment agencies, as well as research organisations and academia from almost all of EU Member States. Representatives of Directorates-General of the EC and EU agencies involved in the monitoring of chemicals and the assessment of risks are also participating. PARC will meet the needs of risk assessment agencies to better anticipate emerging risks and respond to the challenges and priorities of the new European policies.

Southeast Europe has seen a century of continuous transformation and “transition” – the disappearance and emergence of states, political and legal systems, ideologies, institutions, and social classes. This has been accompanied by a stability of social practices resistant to change. Shaken by radically changing ideological and legal structures, citizens rely on customary and informal social networks of kin, symbolic kin, and friends for meeting economic needs, and on clan- or kin-related structures rather than the rule of law for security and protection. We trace the persistence of informal practices to: 1) the external origin of major transformations, including the “transitions” to and from socialism; 2) the incomplete character of change, which has tended to be replaced by equally radical but diametrically opposed projects; 3) the development of a buffer culture based on informal practices, directed to enabling people to survive under unstable conditions; and 4) the widening gap between formal institutions and informal social practices. The distance between proclaimed goals and existing practices represents the key challenge to the European integration of Balkan societies. The integration process could end with superficial change, behind which the "real" social life of corruption, clientelism, tension, inequality, and exclusion will continue to unfold. We propose to explicate the key formal and informal “rules of the game”, and to identify and decipher the "unwritten rules" which underpin tactical maneuvering between formal and informal institutions, in various spheres and at various levels of social life. These would then be compared to the demands and recommendations laid out in the key EU documents outlining expectations from Southeast European states. The goal is to contribute to the formulation of policy recommendations which would aim not to eradicate informal practices, but to close the gap between formal and informal institutions in Balkan societies.