The “Real Value of Energy Efficiency, REFEREE” project strongly advocates the principle that energy efficiency measures will be key for delivering the European Green Deal, which sets out the roadmap for making Europe the first climate-neutral continent by 2050 and, in this framework, aims to (1) analyze and quantify the direct and indirect non-energy impacts of energy efficiency investments and to (2) develop easy-to-use tools to support policy makers at the national, regional and local level. REFEREE will help households, businesses, financing institutions, policy makers and other relevant stakeholders to evaluate the multiple impacts of their energy efficiency choices. It will encompass the assessment of energy efficiency investments in a variety of ecosystems, including low income regions and socially imbalanced societies. To fulfil these objectives, the project will design and develop an integrated set of analysis tools from the macro-economic level to the micro level at consumer and firm scale. Through a user-friendly interface, it will then develop a Policy Support System will allow policy makers, businesses, financial institutions and others to better understand the real value of energy efficiency policies and their cost effectiveness. It will also allow them to develop more effective plans, means and measures. To maximise the impact of the REFEREE policy support tool, stakeholders will be involved from the inception of the project, through concrete opportunities for its co-development, pilot studies, and focused dissemination and communication actions. Thanks to a unique consortium structure and strategic partnerships, REFEREE can offer an unprecedented effort of dissemination and exploitation with focus on state, municipal as well as entrepreneurial decision makers in the framework of the multilevel governance approach.

BRIDGEGAP is a multidisciplinary research project reuniting former members of the ANTICORRP consortium (Transparency International, ERCAS/SAR, CSD, University of PISA, University of Perugia) who have continued to invest in the development of data commons allowing corruption understanding and monitoring on the basis of objective data (e.g. Integrity Watch, Index for Public Integrity, T-Index, Russian Economic Footprint), with new academic partners who published novel methods to measure money-laundering (Utrecht University) anthropologists and criminologists who pioneered corruption studies in liberal democracies (IFFS), and new IT groups like the Ukrainian organisation YouControl, the first to interconnect data to enable searches of the assets of sanctioned individuals through its algorithm Follow the Money. BRIDGEGAP fills the knowledge gaps regarding both the extent to and the mechanisms by which corruption infiltrates open societies even across borders and it produces measurements of corruption across countries and time by its innovative models, as well as social network maps. It also assesses and offers solutions to the digital transparency gaps, ranging from the tools of transparency, the use and abuse of technology in corruption and anticorruption to the state of it. Finally, it assesses public accountability and anticorruption regulation across EUMS and candidate states to identify regulatory and impact gaps, thus addressing the academia–policy gap in corruption studies. The research will result in academic publications as well as in interactive analytical and research commons like comparative law repositories EU Compass, European Transparency Index, Follow the Money search engines across newly interconnected databases. All its pooled data will be displayed transparently on the website as a Data Hub and will offer end users the same investigation and analytical tools as the project researchers, inviting crowd-sourcing and offering online tutorials.

The European Technology and Innovation Platform Bioenergy - Support of Renewable Fuels and Advanced Bioenergy Stakeholders 2022-2025 (ETIP-B2022-2025) project aims at triggering collaborative efforts of stakeholders from research to innovation to implementation in the field of renewable fuels and bioenergy. The project will support and empower stakeholders´ contributions to the Green Deal and the Strategic Energy Technology (SET)-Plan. The European Technology and Innovation Platfrom Bioenergy (ETIP Bioenergy) aims to actively engage with stakeholders and civil society, link their needs to policy making of the European Union and Member States, and to provide advice to industry. The ETIP-B2022-2025 project´s objective is to support ETIP Bioenergy in this task. To achieve these objectives, the project will facilitate Steering Committee and Working Group meetings for ETIP Bioenergy, provide information on research and innovation activities, related technologies and policies on the ETIP Bioenergy website, engage with stakeholders from all involved sectors for information exchange and to provide a basis for ETIP Bioenergy documents, form citizen´s panels to develop citizen´s visions on the role of renewable fuels and bioenergy, and develop policy recommendations. Specific features will include facilitating an update of the Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA), a biofuels and bioenergy innovation challenge (BBIC), a policy workshop, two Stakeholder Plenary Meetings (SPM) and the development of a financial independence plan for ETIP Bioenergy. All activities will be widely communicated through newsletters, social media postings and dissemination events.

CONNEKT is a research and action project involving 14 partners from the EU, MENA and Balkans and targeting 8 countries in the MENA and Balkans region (Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia, Morocco, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, North Macedonia and Bulgaria) that will run for 3.5 years. Its purpose is to establish a multi-dimensional map of drivers of violent extremism (VE) among youth aged 12-30 in MENA and Balkans and to identify the interplay between them. The multi-disciplinary research and the multi-stakeholder approach will allow the enrichment of empirical and academic research in order to draw a comprehensive picture of VE drivers among youth in target countries. Using a building-blocks methodology the project will be staged to allow the findings from one phase to inform research and data analysis for the following phases at key milestones. A final stage will be devoted to research on prevention of VE from a community perspective and will converge in a set of actions and recommendations on prevention measures implemented at a local and community level. Objective 1: Mapping past and current country strategies and approaches towards radicalisation and VE in Europe, MENA and Balkans. Objective 2: Drawing a comprehensive picture of radicalisation drivers among youth in Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia, Morocco, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, North Macedonia and Bulgaria. Objective 3: Establishing a cartography of conducive collective contexts of radicalisation and VE in MENA and Balkans involving diverse stakeholders Objective 4: Identifying measures, strategies and policies at state, community, local and society level to prevent radicalisation and VE in target countries Objective 5: Implementing pilot experiences of context intervention in target countries in liaison with local authorities and civil society actors Objective 6: Transferring results and recommendations to multi-level policy-makers in target countries and to the EU.