The three-year CrossGov project aims to enhance knowledge on how coherence and cross-compliance of marine related policies and legislation affect the ability to realise the goals of the EU Green Deal for the protection of marine ecosystems and biodiversity, and to co-create proposals and roadmaps towards this end. A core strength of CrossGov is the close collaboration with the policymaking community that will be engaged in co-creation of knowledge and recommendations for solutions. The background for the project is the complex multi-level and multi-sector governance system created by global and regional international frameworks, the EU and the European coastal states. This policy landscape has not managed to halt the degradation of European seas and will be challenged further by the EU Green Deal’s call for transformative changes. Based on scenarios and methodological guidance for studies of coherence, cross-compliance and scientific advice, the project will analyse how policies and legislation at various levels support or impede progress towards the Green Deal in the marine domain. The practical results of attempts to implement the various requirements will be studied in three regional cases (the North Sea, the Baltic and the Mediterranean), and in five national cases (Finland, Norway, Netherlands, France, Italy). The insights gained will be discussed with CrossGov’s Stakeholder Forum to co-create recommendations for better integrated policies towards implementing the Green Deal in the marine context. The innovative, web-based and fit-for purpose roadmaps and methodological guidelines will enable policymakers to effectively foster environmentally sustainable law and governance that is fit-for-purpose for delivering the societal transformation called for.

The main objective of the proposal is to bring the many facets and faces of people working in ocean science & research to the general public of Europe by organising a series of interconnected EU Blue Researchers Nights (BlueNIGHTs) to demonstrate that the ocean can be a source of inspiration, an object of interest/study, and a field of investigation for people with very different backgrounds, hobbies and passions, including science, history, technology, sociology, pedagogy, economics, art, design, etc. By doing so, this collective project will: - Bring people to key objectives, principles and priorities of the European Green Deal that relate to the ocean: delivering a healthy and resilient ocean that can support sustainable Blue Growth and respond to Societal Priorities of Europe. - Contribute to make European citizens Ocean Literate in line with the objectives and priorities of EU4Ocean Coalition, an initiative supported by the European Commission's Directorate-General for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries (DG MARE). The project will build on the following principles: - Collective and truly European - mobilising organisations from each EU RSAs to prepare activities and events for presenting their own research/scientific activities. - Interdisciplinary/multidisciplinary/transdisciplinary - the partner organisations from different EU MS will represent a diversity of disciplinary fields and research skills/experiences that are focusing on the ocean, and on the complex connections between human activities and ocean ecosystems. - Immersive, inclusive and interconnected - by combining: (a) an interactive and practical experiences on the spot (in each of the partners location) building on doing, touching, gaming, trying, exploring; (b) an interactive virtual experience, by way of an innovative virtual reality technology, that will allow the public to explore both the ocean and researchers activities by simulating real life working conditons.

"The Erasmus+ project entittled ""Supporting the development of socially-inclusive Blue Challenges in schools in the Mediterranean sea-basin"" (BlueS_Med) aims at developing, testing and evaluating innovative approaches to integrate ocean/marine issues and challenges in the curriculum and educational activties of schools in different Mediterranean countries. With partners from France, Greece, Italy and Malta, combining expertise in education, marine science and policy - along with a strong track record in the development of ocean literacy initiatives for different target groups, the project will be implemented in four phases: - Phase I is a conception phase, focusing on the development of the Blue challenge framework that will guide the development and implementation of Blue Challenges at schools in the following year. It will help also consolidating the consortium and share experiences and practice among partners and countries;; - Phase II focuses on the development of the Blue challenge in thirteen schools associated to the consortium - designing the Blue challenge and developing innovative educational tools and material that wil be required for implementing the Blue challenge. This phase also include the selection of pupil ambassadors in each school (two per school) and the organisation of a transnational training of these pupils' ambassadors (accompanied by their teachers) to train them in the role they will have in communicating and disseminating the Blue Challenge activities and results . - Phase III is the practical implementation of the Blue challenge in the schools with support from partner organisations. It includes also the monitoring and evaluation of the blue school challenge to assess its impact and added value. - Phase IV aims at making a synthesis and disseminating the results of the project to wider audience in each country and the mediterranean sea basin scale, with in particular the organisation of national and Mediterranean Sea basin multiplier events. The project will build on the following principles: (a) co-building - ensuring children/pupils contribute to the co-design of ""their"" Blue challenge - putting co-responsibility and action at the center of their Blue Challenge; (b) interactive and proactive - making use of all e-tools and social medias to support implementation and peer-to-peer exchanges, while giving the priority to ""practical activities"" that give a feeling about the ocean and the human-ocean relationships; (c) inclusive - giving special attention to mobilise children from different social groups, to generate gender unbiased questions and to learning about the principle of democracy (discussing, listening, accepting while being still mobilised) when designing and implementing their Blue challenge; (d) sustainable - ensuring the footprint of the project and of the actions proposed under the Blue Challenge of each school is minimised - and that potential environmental and social ancilary benefits are delivered whenever possible and relevant. The project will deliver five key intellectual outputs (developed in English and translated in French, Italian and Greek - so as to facilitate dissemination within the different partner countries, in the Mediterranean sea basin and at the European scale): - Intellectual output I: The framework and guidance for the Mediterrean Blue challenge processes, (a) building in particular on a benchmarking of existing experiences in ""bringing the sea"" to the classroms and (b) proposing a systematic monitoring and evaluation of the blue challenges implementation so as to assess their added value and benefits; - Intellectual output 2: presenting the proposed Blue challenges for each individual school (13 in total) in terms of concepts, proposed activities, innovative educational material developed, planning and expected ouput- Intellectual output 3, summarising the results of the monitoring and evaluation of the Blue challenges implemented to assess their added value & impacts - Intellectual output 4: A Knowledge base of tested educational material for internalising the ocean in different curricula/education, facilitating its access to different groups so as to ensure the wider use and application in other schools - Intellectual output 5: A road map for supporting the uptake of Blue challenges in Mediterranean Sea basin schools (with specific country-specific annexes)"

CLIM2POWER will develop a climate service that integrates seasonal weather forecasts into decision making in the electricity sector. In particular, we assess the value of current and possible future seasonal forecasts for an improved management of power generation portfolios. For that purpose, cutting-edge seasonal forecasts are down-scaled and coupled with stochastic power system models to estimate the impact of seasonal weather conditions on renewable electricity generation and electricity and district heating demand. Subsequently, we derive optimal operation schedules for the electricity sector, such as optimal operation of hydro-storage and of fossil fuel acquisition, applying a set of existing bottom-up, technology rich power system models. Possible impacts from changing renewable supply and demand on the power-system as a whole and electricity prices are also derived. While the final climate service is going to be made available for the whole Europe, we additionally develop four regional case studies in Portugal, France, Sweden and in the German-Austrian market zone to validate the European model. Additionally, the case studies put a different focus on markets and market prices, dam operation restrictions due to ecological regulation in the river systems, and flexibility options in the power sector. As climate change may introduce changes to the seasonality of climate processes, future climate scenarios are assessed in an additional sensitivity analysis. The climate service is developed together with important stakeholders from the sector in an iterative process and is made available as public web service online. In particular power generation & trading companies, power system operators & regulators, power consumers, and water managers are going to directly profit from the outcome of our project.