MIGRASYL (“Migration & asylum challenges in the Euro-Mediterranean and Africa”) focuses on the study of Mediterranean third countries as a field of experimentation on the issue of migration and as a bridging link between Southern Europe and the Sahel. Mediterranean migration has become a major concern for academic researchers, European policy makers and public opinion. Since 2011, major political upheavals on the Southern shore of the Mediterranean have brought about a crisis situation with new long-term socio-economic and legal consequences at a Euro-Mediterranean level. These changes require the renewal of the paradigms and frameworks of thought. The Mediterranean is a particularly relevant laboratory for the development of new migratory configurations. It is at the crossroads of the South-North migration route and also those of South-South, East-West. It is composed of neighbouring countries that are especially affected by migration because of their geographical location at the "forefront" of arrivals of migrants and refugees from Africa and the Middle East. MIGRASYL’s ambition is to promote the third countries’ migration policy domain that it is in urgent need of investigation. This area is a crucial empirical field for analyzing the complex interrelation concerning push factors and policies managing migration, asylum and refugees in the EuroMed. In the long term, MIGRASYL aims to build a unique multi-partner digital platform, gathering national migration observatories. With this international project, and over a 18 months period (November 2017 – April 2019), MIGRASYL will constitute a network of Euro-Mediterranean and sub-Saharan partners (France, Italy, Spain, Greece, Austria, Turkey, Mauritania, Senegal, Tunisia, Morocco, Lebanon, Malta) thanks to workshops dedicated to the challenges of international migrations and to the evolution of asylum law in this geographical area. These workshops and the MIGRASYL consortium meeting will aim at organizing and structuring an international H2020 project which will be submitted to the European Commission in 2018 or 2019, in the framework of the Societal Challenge “Europe in a changing world – Inclusive, innovative and reflective societies”, « 1. Call on Migration and the refugee crisis ». The MIGRASYL researchers will conduct fieldwork on 3 geographical areas: Southern Europe, the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa, which are all impacted by important migratory flows and by the hosting of asylum seekers. MIGRASYL ambitions to gather partner institutions in the field of socio-anthropology, political sciences, law, history, demography and geography. This core partnership will be complemented by a network of associations, NGOs and Euro-Mediterranean civil society players. MIGRASYL’s outcomes will include empirical knowledge on social assistance schemes of host and transit countries, based on interviews and statistical data. Policy-makers will benefit from an analysis of the coherence and effectiveness of European policies on migration, compared with the development of migration policies in third countries. MIGRASYL will highlight good practices of institutions active in the defense of migrants and migration governance, at local, regional, national and international level, in order to combat irregular migration. It will also provide an analysis on the unexplored link between migration and sustainable development policies, particularly for Africa.

Strengthening french participation in European or international calls is a major challenge. The MRSEI program aims to facilitate access by French scientists to these funding programs by supporting the creation of networks able of successfully responding such calls. The expected outcome is a reinforcement of the French scientists positioning, to increase their visibility to develop and coordinate ambitious international multidisciplinary projects. We identified two H2020 calls (SC1-BHC-03-2018 "Exploiting research results of the human microbiome for personalised prediction and prevention of disease" and SC2/SFS-02-2019 "Healthy livestock gut ecosystem for sustainable production") that INRA can coordinate. Research in metagenomics and epidemiology has delivered knowledge on associations between the microbiome and many diseases. This also allowed identifying host-microbe-interactions and microbiome-mediated potential causalities and disease mechanisms. The challenge of both calls is to define healthy conditions and predict and/or prevent diseases. The Pathom’NET project aims to cover the impacts expected by the selected calls. For SC1-BHC-03-2018, these are to i) develop personalised medicine approaches for the prediction/prevention of diseases through exploitation of existing microbiome and Omics data, ii) identify and validate microbial functionalities for robust healthy conditions, iii) define more valuable clinical tools to iv) predict and prevent diseases. For SFS-02-2019, the gut ecosystems of livestock should be characterized, their functions and interactions (with host, feed…) should be studied in order to improve production and/or health. The expected impacts are to i) improve resource use and environmental impact of livestock production and/or livestock health and ii) increase production efficiency, including reduced losses, and contribute to more resilient production systems. As such objectives cannot be accomplished on an individual country level, both calls expect intensive collaboration and synergies between scientists across disciplines. In accordance with this, we started to build our consortium to cover the aspects required by the calls and reach the expected impacts. The challenge of both calls being to define healthy conditions and predict/prevent diseases, we gather specialists of OMICs data analysis, statistical integration and modeling, together with biologists with specific model systems to validate the hypothesis that will be pinpointed by these approaches. For SC1-BHC-03-2018, the aim is (i) to build on existing high quality databases, and study endogenous and exogenous factors (lifestyle, ageing, diet, environment…) to accelerate the translation into novel and personalised approaches and clinical tools for disease prediction and prevention. These novel clinical means will need to be validated and efficiently integrated into personalised medicine, in line with expected impacts (iv & v). For these aspects, we include epidemiologists and teams involved in clinical approaches. In addition, to identify and validate microbial functionalities for robust healthy conditions (ii), we have partners involved in microbiome analysis, epidemiologists and specialists of the intestinal physiopathology. For SFS-02-2019, the gut ecosystems of livestock should be characterized (comparing species, breeds, production systems, evolution with age, transmission), their functions and interactions with host, feed and management should be studied to improve production and/or health. Again, in line with the expected impact, we gather specialists of multi-OMICs data analysis, statistical integration together with biologists to validate the biomarkers that will be identified. To conclude, our program will allow us to develop the international consortium needed to cover the aspects required by the selected calls and reach all the impacts expected. The pathom’NET project will end with the second H2020 application, April 2019.

Serpentine (ultramafic) outcrops in Europe cover over 10,000 km2 and have a low-fertility and low-productivity, making them unattractive for traditional agriculture. Many of these areas are slowly abandoned by farmers, with rural exodus and landscape closure. However, ultramafic landscapes have potential to provide multiple ecosystem services and contribute to Europe’s goals towards insuring food security, production of renewable raw materials and renewable energy. The idea of phytomining metals emerged in the 90s and the goal was to cultivate plants able to accumulate trace metals from metal-rich soils and transport them to the shoots (>1%), which could then be harvested as a bio-ore to recover highly valuable metals, e.g. nickel (Ni). More recently, the concept has evolved as an integrated chain from soil management to production of bio-sourced refined metal products. Nickel agromining can offer an eco-efficient alternative to classical pyro- or hydrometallurgical processes, as well as providing biomass for local energy production. AGRONICKEL aims to implement agroecosystems which can lead to better soil resource efficiency and to offer a fully integrated, new agromining agriculture that could cover thousands of km2 in Europe and benefit local communities with sustainable rural development (Figure 1). AGRONICKEL has identified the bottlenecks that need to be solved before agromining fully develops in Europe. Traditional agronomy has already been developed for the Ni-hyperaccumulator Alyssum murale but a move towards a more resource-friendly agriculture is needed. Work Package (WP) 1 aims to design a new agroecological agronomy for hyperaccumulator plants in combination with agronomic practices (such as co-cropping/rotations, organic amendments, or biotechnological tools,..). The use of the plant biomass has to be thought of in terms of an integrated cycle. Thus, three uses have to be designed in WP2: potential use of these crops for energy purposes, the design of a wide array of nickel products to avoid dependance upon a specific niche market, and the production of Ca- and K-rich by-products which can be safely recycled in agromining fields (according to regulations). The full array of ecosystem services will be determined and optimised in WP3 and 4 (Life cycle assessment) so that the agromining chain can bring full value to local economies (bioeconomy) and provide green sources of energy and strategic metals, as well as maintaining or ameliorating the fertility of ultramafic regions (lowering Ni toxicity, enhancing fertility). Possible impacts concerning the use of local biodiversity, the exchange of gene pools, and pollination activities will be given full attention. The consortium associates the leaders of phytomining research in Europe and also includes one SME which has already started activity in this new promising field. Additionally, one SME and a start-up are ready to implement agromining using the technologies developed in AGRONICKEL.

Finding pathways for humans to coexist with biodiversity in Europe requires significant levels of up-to-date knowledge on species status, distribution, relative abundance, and their interactions with humans and each other. This is because of the human-dominatednature of the landscape with its associated pressures and drivers, the manifold forms of direct and indirect interactions betweenhumans and biodiversity, and the resulting need for adaptive management. Effective conservation requires continental scalecoordination, which requires continental scale data. This can only be achieved if we avail of methods that (1) can target many speciesat the same time, and (2) can make use of data collected for many different purposes by a diversity of professional and citizenscientists. Digital camera traps are one such tool, the use of which has exploded in recent years. There are literally tens of millions ofimages of wildlife being produced each year across Europe. However, the state of data processing tools and data sharing proceduresare not yet developed to allow an efficient classification, storage, and sharing of this data. Camera traps are also used in a myriaddifferent ways, with different field sampling protocols used in different areas and dependent on the primary motivations of the usersand their target species. It is unclear to what extent data collected under different regimes can be compared. In order to make thisvast data resource more available for scientists and biodiversity managers this project proposes a set of four interlinkedworkpackages that will; (1) Explore legal, institutional, and social contraints on data sharing with a view to identify pathways thatfaciliate making data as open and available as possible. (2) Develop efficient and AI-enabled database structures that facilitate theefficient processing of raw data, the safe storage of the data, and export formats that conform to emerging data standards tofacilitate data sharing and comparative analysis. (3) An exploration of statistical analysis tools and procedures that find ways tomaximise the integration of data collected under different protocols into common analysis, essentially determining which data, onwhich species, can be used to determine which inferences. (4) A set of demonstration analyses that reveal the possibility and added-value that can be obtained when data is pooled across projects and countries. These illustrative analyses will cover a range ofbiodiversity policy areas, including One Health, Climate Change, Invasive Species, Natura 2000 site management, and conservationof Habitat Directive listed species.