There is a need to strengthen the capacity of Market Surveillance Authorities (MSAs) to conduct Ecodesign related market surveillance activities with respect to new and pending industrial and tertiary sector products. Especially in the case of customised products which are unsuitable for testing in laboratories. There is a lack of expertise, experience, and resources available across Europe for such kind of testing. An increasing concern is that new regulations addressing these products risk being unenforceable. The aim of the INTAS project is to address these concerns and provide technical and cooperative support, as well as capacity building activities, to MSAs charged with enforcing these regulations. The need for the INTAS project arises from the difficulty that MSAs and market actors face in establishing and verifying compliance with energy performance requirements for large industrial products subject to requirements of the Ecodesign Directive. The focus of the project is to support compliance for very large industrial products, specifically transformers and industrial fans, with the requirements of the Ecodesign Directive. The energy consumption of transformers and industrial fans is very significant and thus the risk of losses due to poor compliance cannot be ignored. The project aims to: a. support European Member State MSAs deliver compliance for large products (specifically for transformers and large fans); b. support industry to be sure of what their obligations are under the Ecodesign Directive and to deliver compliance in a manner that will be broadly accepted by MSAs; c. foster a common European approach to the delivery and verification of compliance for these products. The INTAS project involves 16 partners among them there are 11 organisations, which are National MSAs or cooperating closely with the National MSAs, targeting 10 European countries (Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain and Italy).

ANTICSS objectives are (i) to assess and define "circumvention" in order to achieve a better product positioning in relation to EU Ecodesign and Energy labelling legislation and relevant harmonised standards; this includes clear delimitation from other effects to facilitate unambiguous public (media) communication; (ii) to collect, analyse and learn from cases of circum¬vention by literature research and dedicated expert interviews, as well as analysing existing EU Ecodesign and Energy labelling legislation and standardisation for possible loopholes. The potential relation between circumvention and "smart" products with specific embedded software will be also addressed. From these findings, conclusions how to better detecting and preventing future circumvention will be derived; (iii) to assess impacts 'if' and 'how much' energy consumption and/or functional performance modifications could be ascribed to circumvention by conducting appliance testing; (iv) to define alternative test procedures or check lists with the aim to by-pass any possible measurement circumvention; based on the results ANTICSS will ensure sustainability beyond the project life by (v) practical capacity building measures for key actors of market surveillance and test laboratories, (vi) supporting communication and collaboration platforms between major stakeholders and (vii) providing policy recommendations for policy makers and standardisation bodies to prevent future circumvention under EU Ecodesign and Energy labelling. ANTICSS will also provide reliability to manufacturers by specifying potentially vague legislation and standards which might be interpreted differently by market actors and some of them taking unfair advantages so far. By overall awareness raising on circumvention among stakeholders, ANTICSS will be supporting an effective EU legislation enforcement and thus increasing acceptance and trust of market actors and civil society into the Ecodesign and Energy labelling legislation.

MSTyr15 (Market Surveillance Action TYRes 2015) will help deliver the economic and environmental benefits of Regulation (EC) No. 1222/2009 on the labelling of tyres with respect to fuel efficiency. It will achieve this by: • Coordinating the monitoring, verification and enforcement activities of 13 Market Surveillance Authorities (MSAs) across the Single Market and Turkey; • Improving the effectiveness of the MSAs through skills-building training, the provision of guidelines and the promotion of Best Practices. MSTyr15 will enhance the functioning of the European Single Market by ensuring that the tyres regulatory measures are effectively enforced across MS. It will deliver energy savings >105 GWh/year through removing incorrectly labelled tyres from the market. Experience and resources for enforcement have been very limited in many MS since the tyres regulations were introduced in 2009. MSTyr15 includes mechanisms for assisting the skills development of less experienced staff and their authorities, supporting the adoption of common best practices and providing budgets to cover the high costs of testing tyres to the required standards. It will coordinate market surveillance actions involving checks on in excess of 15,000 tyres. It will deliver a higher level of surveillance activities that go beyond testing. The consortium will work closely with other non-participating MSAs across the EEA though its liaison with the Tyres ADCO. Additionally, the MSTyr15 consortium will work together with an Advisory Board comprising of supply-side business, consumer organisations and environmental NGOs. The expected results are: - Adoption of best practices; - Market surveillance being undertaken in a more cost effective and consistent manner; - Increased awareness of and respect for market surveillance by tyres suppliers and users; - Effective enforcement of EC Regulation on the labelling of tyres resulting in substantial energy savings expected to be better than 105 GWh/year.

The COVID-19 pandemic has confirmed and further highlighted the importance of planning and investing in research and innovation well before a health crisis occurs. For this purpose, the main goal of BE READY is to build a consolidated European Research and Innovation Area that provides the foundation of the candidate European partnership for pandemic preparedness so to improve the EU's preparedness to predict and respond to emerging health threats by better coordinating funding for research and innovation at EU, national (and regional) level towards common objectives and an agreed Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda. The Partnership is expected to build on existing pandemic preparedness networks, and work in synergy with the Health Emergency Response Authority (HERA), in close collaboration with ECDC, EMA and other relevant international and European actors. BE READY is composed by 24 organisations from 15 countries with complementary expertise and policy area ranging from Public Health Organisations, Ministries (of Science, University, Health, Innovation or Environment) and Research Performing Organisations that ensures a cross-cutting, interdisciplinary Global Health and One Health approach.