The event, organised by the Belgian regions represented by the Department EWI from the Flemish Government, Innoviris from the Brussels capital region government, and SPW Economie from the Walloon government, aims to bring together researchers involved in research on digital technologies within the Horizon Europe programme, implementers involved in projects from the Digital Europe Programme, and policy makers working on digital policy at regional, national, and European levels. The primary goal is to discuss policy and practical challenges hindering cooperation between the two framework programmes, particularly in terms of digitalisation. To ensure diverse perspectives, there is a strong emphasis on making this event interactive. Other objectives include fostering networking among different target groups, reviewing the functioning of the Digital Europe Programme, and providing a platform to showcase best practices in cooperation and synergy between the two framework programmes. The event is scheduled for the 5th of February 2024 in Brussels, with visits to relevant organisations in Belgium planned for the following day. Overall, the event aims to create a dynamic platform where researchers, implementers, policy contributors, and other stakeholders can converge, exchange ideas, and contribute to the advancement of digitalisation initiatives in Europe.

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.

The implementation of participatory practices for the development of innovations has gained prominence over the last years. Through introducing open R&I configurations innovators can gather additional knowledge about the needs and desires of citizens, public and semi-public caretakers, NGOs, social entrepreneurs etc. and thus be able to answer those through innovative products and processes. However, the ways how this is done, how it is based on legal and regulatory frameworks and to what extent ethical issues are taken into account differ massively between various countries and contexts. Furthermore, concrete concerns regarding the protection of participating non-traditional stakeholders (e.g. citizens) and their potential exploitation emerge with these new modes of innovation. Therefore, PRO-Ethics elaborates an ethics framework with principles, guidelines, assessment criteria, good practice and proposals on regulatory environments how citizens’ engagement can be properly put in place without disregarding ethical principles of fairness, transparency, gender, privacy and sustainability. This will be done through iterative discourse and learning loops together with eight participating research funding organisations (RFOs), five expert partners and two international organisations. Furthermore, the framework will be applied, tested and validated in real life through 11 practical cases and experimental pilots implemented by the RFOs in three different action fields (i.e. project funding; strategy development and evaluation). PRO-Ethics will have an European-wide outreach, nevertheless, it will incorporate and compare local conditions and other specific and cultural characteristics of the partnering RFOs from Austria, Czech Republic, Germany, Lithuania, Norway, Romania, Spain and Brussels implementing the PRO-Ethics cases and pilots.

The sense of urgency for a rapid sustainable transformation of our cities has never been greater. There is an increasing need to stake out pathways for such a transition, to reach acceptance of the need for transformation and enabling capacity building. The current approaches to target urban challenges and meet different international goals are often fragmented and incoherent as they are based on different ambitions and understandings of how cities and urban areas operate. Research and innovation contribute with evidence on how to address urban dilemmas, while supporting capacity building for urban transformation and turning wicked issues into synergistic potential. This needs to be supported by aligning ongoing related initiatives and activities, as well as building upon existing knowledge in order to achieve stronger synergies towards greater impact. ENUTC aims at pooling resources from 16 participating research programme owners / managers of 14 countries to implement joint actions, including one main call and one additional call for proposals, in the area of urban transformation capacities. The objectives of ENUTC are to: 1) To enable capacity building in research, business, city administration and society for urban transformation; 2) To support integrated approaches and solutions for sustainable urban development for the three topics of ENUTC: Urban circular economies, community-based developments and urban innovation ecosystems, and robust and resilient urban infrastructure and the built environment; 3) To support transnational, pan-European research networking, community building and ensure synergies; 4) To support activities which have a clear impact on transnational and evidence-based urban policies; 5) To support research and innovation, which make a clear progress to reaching targets of the international policies, goals and missions;