J-AGEII, the Coordination Action for implementation and alignment activities of the Joint Programming Initiative (JPI) 'More Years Better Lives – the Challenges and Opportunities of Demographic Change', will support and foster the overall management of the JPI, update the Strategic Research Agenda and support implementation through joint activities between Member States. Furthermore, the work plan will include dissemination and information exchange with scientific and societal stakeholders, policy makers and research funders as well as an evaluation and monitoring exercise. Ultimately, the project and the JPI seek to stimulate the alignment of relevant national programmes and EU initiatives, strengthen the base of multi-disciplinary and holistic ageing research in Europe and to provide scientific evidence for policy responses to demographic change.

The Transformations to Sustainability (T2S) ERA-NET Cofund programme will be implemented in the context of a Belmont Forum Collaborative Research Action in cooperation with the NORFACE (New Opportunities for Research Funding Agency Cooperation in Europe) network and the International Social Science Council (ISSC). A comprehensive and concerted research initiative is needed that can boost research on transformations to sustainability, that can catalyse new kinds of solutions to environmental and social challenges. This T2S programme therefore seeks to bring into being and nurture integrated teams of scientists from relevant academic disciplines including, as appropriate, social, natural, human, natural, engineering, agricultural and health/medical sciences disciplines and societal stakeholders to produce new knowledge and perspectives that can contribute to finding equitable and durable solutions to the challenges of sustainability in specific contexts, in support of the Sustainable Development Goals. This programme will contribute to re-structuring the broad field of sustainability research to place social science at the heart of interdisciplinary efforts and will contribute to a step change in scale and scope for research programming on this topic. This future-oriented call will be jointly undertaken by major funding agencies in Europa, the United States, Brazil, Taiwan and Japan. The T2S programme will coordinate the research efforts of the participating Member States and international partners by implementing a joint trans-national call with European Commission co-funding to fund innovative comparative, transnational and interdisciplinary research initiatives within this thematic field. The T2S partners will pursue the expansion of their present effective collaboration and actively strive at widening the consortium.

Existing and rising inequalities pose fundamental challenges to European societies and economies. Large disparities in human and social capacities are counterproductive to a sustainable and creative economy and participatory governance and inclusion. The increasing gulf between rich and poor, exacerbated by the recent financial and economic crises, is a key concern. The sources of inequalities in contemporary societies are complex and highly intertwined and they and their consequences can only be understood through comprehensive, comparative and innovative research activities. It is for this reason that the NORFACE Network is committed to launch a transnational research programme on the topic of Dynamics of Inequality Across the Life-course: structures and processes (DIAL). The DIAL programme will contribute to understanding the dynamics of inequalities as they unfold over the life-course, causal processes and drivers in relation to these inequalities, the role of time with regard to inequalities and the impact of these inequalities on social cohesion. The specific challenge of this Call is to address the dynamics comparatively in their social, cultural, economic and political dimensions and to disentangle the impact of past events and current circumstances on later outcomes to provide solutions to reverse inequalities across the life-course. The NORFACE DIAL programme will coordinate the research efforts of the participating European Member States by implementing a joint trans-national call with European Commission co-funding to fund innovative comparative, transnational and interdisciplinary research initiatives within this thematic field. The NORFACE Network has received core funding under the European Union’s ERA-Net scheme since 2004 and has developed a close partnership of European national agencies responsible for funding research activities in the social sciences. The DIAL programme builds on the successes of the NORFACE Network.

Cities around the globe are struggling to meet the needs of their citizens with respect to food, energy and water. These three sectors are inextricably linked and actions in one sector more often have impacts in one or both of the others; these interacting sectors can therefore be seen as a Food-Energy-Water Nexus (FEW Nexus) of systems. The ERANET Sustainable Urbanisation Global Initiative (EN-SUGI) will bring together the fragmented research and innovation expertise across Europe and beyond to find innovative new solutions to this FEW Nexus challenge. Furthermore, by linking the activity of the Joint Programming Initiative (JPI) Urban Europe and the Belmont Forum (BF), EN-SUGI develops more resilient, applied urban solutions that bring research and innovation together from across the globe. EN-SUGI is a project that foresees the participation of 19 Funding Agencies eligible for the EU top up, 18 from JPI Urban Europe and 1 from Argentina, and 6 FAs non eligible for EU top up, under the umbrella of the Belmont forum , collaborating on a volunteer base. EN-SUGI Main objectives and impacts are: To support development of practical innovations and new collaborative research that will allow urban areas to understand and address the challenges of the Food-Energy-Water systems. (Impact = 12-14 projects funded, and 15 cities/local authorities engaged) To provide a framework for aligning R&I agendas of JPI Urban Europe and the BF,. The alignment will help foster transdisciplinary collaboration and co-creation in research and innovation, and facilitate the use of global expertise and knowledge (Impact = 24 funding organisations involved) EN-SUGI will foster development of international relationships between the different parts of the research and innovation community – to enable them to contribute to addressing those challenges and goals, while aligning them to wider, strategic initiatives, including the SRIA agenda, Future Earth and UN –Habitat.

The JPI for Urban Europe ERA-NET co-fund Smart Urban Futures (ENSUF) objectives are: - To tackle fragmentation and the implementation gap. - To contribute to integrated sustainable urban development. - To strengthen European urban research and innovation alignment. - To scale up and translate best practices. - To develop, analyse and test new strategies and technologies of urban governance and urban living in order to shape the economic, social and environmental needs of citizens for sustainable urban development. ENSUF will call for transnational research and innovation projects that operationalise and translate a framework of three main elements, and launch the Urban Europe response to the implementation gap in sustainable urban development. The three main elements are: - Transdiciplinary co-creation in research and innovation. - Smart integrated urban development. - Utilizing the spatial dimensions and processes of urban areas. These three elements will be integrated by transnational, forward-looking and comparative research and innovation projects focused on the following three priority call topics: - Concepts and strategies for smart urban transformation, growth and shrinkage - New dynamics of public services - Inclusive, vibrant and accessible urban communities The ENSUF Cofund proposal responds to the Horizon 2020 work programme for 2014 call ‘EURO-5-2015: ERA–NET on Smart Urban Futures, Overcoming the Crisis: New Ideas, Strategies and Governance Structures for Europe’. The EURO-5 call scope is to analyse strengths and weaknesses of current models of urban development, in order to improve knowledge and to identify and shape urban needs. In response, ENSUF will deliver (a) knowledge (strengths and weaknesses of urban development); (b) methodologies (new methods, tools and network approaches) and (c) a validation/assessment of the co-creation model and (d) outline new pathways for urban development.