Europe is facing major economic challenges that require an ambitious economic policy for the 21st century. The EU has set out its vision for Europe's social market economy in the Europe 2020 strategy, which aims at confronting our structural weaknesses through progress in three mutually reinforcing priorities : • smart growth, based on knowledge and innovation, • sustainable growth, promoting a more resource efficient, greener and competitive economy, • inclusive growth, fostering a high employment economy delivering economic, social and territorial cohesion. MANUNET III, as a continuation of MANUNET II, is aligned with the European priorities and pretends to create a smart sustainable growth in the European manufacturing sector by coordinating the research and innovation efforts in the field of advanced manufacturing with a special focus in the key areas of new production processes, adaptive manufacturing systems and technologies for the factory of the future. The project will also reinforce the territorial cohesion through an extended collaboration network. The consortium pretends to respond to the actual economic crisis by promoting the transnational research, innovation and entrepreneurship in the industrial sector, especially in the SMEs, which are the backbone of Europe's economy. Through this strategic and integrated approach to innovation in advanced manufacturing, MANUNET III pretends to maximise European, national and regional research and innovation potential.

In TRANSFORM three European regions join forces and open up their R&I activities to co-create more responsible approaches to innovation. Lombardy in Italy, Brussels in Belgium and Catalonia in Spain are all leaders in experimenting new pathways for territorial development. TRANSFORM brings them together to design, test and disseminate three sound co-creation methodological frameworks (participatory research agenda setting; design for social innovation; and citizen science). These frameworks will be at the forefront of implementation of Smart Specialisation Strategy (S3). They provide approaches and application areas of responsible and accountable territorial development through new forms of local decision-making. They have also proven beneficial in aligning science, innovation and society, making R&D more responsive to citizens’ needs, concerns and aspirations. The three initiatives will implement a mutual learning process within and beyond Europe, pairing with a parallel co-design exercise in Boston (Massachusetts, US). The work in these three clusters will support and increase co-creation and participatory processes within their R&I ecosystems, both building on existing regional commitments towards transformative opportunities and strengthen the opening effect on the organisations involved. Regional governments involved in TRANSFORM will reflect on, experiment with, learn from and adopt RRI approaches to their R&I policies and actions. Concrete examples of inclusive and sustainable territorial development will be attained, thus providing a set of reliable Policy Recommendations to transforming regional R&I ecosystems towards RRI. TRANSFORM will also be integrated into Strategic Roadmaps for the implementation of RRI within S3, addressed to S3 key players, for maximum benefit across all S3 Thematic Platforms.

Livestock farming is a key sector that involves 40 % of the total agricultural activity in Europe. representing a total value for products equal to € 170 billion. However, there is an increasing concern due to livestock farming’s contribution to environmental pollution since it generates more than 1.4 billion tonnes/year of manure leading to significant greenhouse gases (GHG) and air pollutants emissions(NH3, NOX)as well as to soil and water contamination caused by hazardous manure chemicals and biological contaminants (called here emerging contaminants). In this context extensive effort has been carried out for years to assess the detrimental effects of farming systems and to develop abatement methods to be implemented. However, despite major advancements, many fundamental issues are beyond the scope of existing legislation. The main objective of NUTRITIVE is to develop a decision-making tool (DSS, decision support system) able to define the most efficient and sustainable (in its three pillars: environmental, economic, and social) manure management strategies for a given livestock farm limiting manure air emissions as well as soil and water contaminants. This will allow for the formulation of technical guidelines and recommendations that will support policy makers with enhanced knowledge to establish requirements for future European policies. To fulfill this objective, the project is divided into six work packages (WP): WP1 Up-to-date inventory; WP2 Novel management strategies/technologies investigation; WP3 Modelling and LCA; and WP4 Guidelines formulation; WP5 Communication, dissemination, and exploitation; WP6 Management. NUTRITIVE anticipates a wide spread of the project outcomes, with the synthesis of the consortium as a baseline: 22 partners (4 Chinese) from 8 different countries across Europe, covering 6 climatic regions (2 Chinese ones), representing the whole supply chain experts, from animal feed to soil application.