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;

CHIST-ERA is a network of research funding organisations in Europe and beyond with programmes in ICST (Information and Communication Science and Technology), at the intersection of the FET and the ICT domains. CHIST-ERA III aims at supporting transnational research projects addressing long-term scientific challenges in the domain of ICT or at the interface between this and other domains. It also fosters the maturation of the corresponding research topics and the structuration of the corresponding communities. Another goal is to encourage Open Science best practices. In the framework of CHIST-ERA III, two joint transnational calls are planned (CHIST-ERA Calls 2017 and 2018), each covering two topics. The two topics for Call 2017 are "Object recognition and manipulation by robots: data sharing and experiment reproducibility" and "Industrial big data and process modelling for smart factories". The two topics for Call 2018 will be decided toward the end of 2017.

EXPAND II intends to support the implementation of the JPI Urban Europe Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda 2.0 (SRIA 2.0) and advance the R&I programme by (1) supporting JPI Urban Europe’s widening activities towards new countries, stakeholders and partners, (2) facilitating the transition from SRIA 2015 to SRIA 2.0 in terms of enhancing formats, instruments, strategic partnerships, and programme management, and by (3) improving availability and accessibility of research results for cities, funders, policy and decision makers. Since transformations to sustainable and liveable urban futures depend on a broad commitment and co-creation among a diverse set of actors, the identified challenge to be tackled by EXPAND II is widening the community and building capacities in research, policy and society at large. In this sense, the project targets Widening Countries in particular with the aim to establish national dialogues and processes, mobilise national R&I communities dealing with sustainable urban development, intensify strategic relationships of urban stakeholders on transnational level and assess national programmes and instruments for transnational R&I cooperation. The transition arena concept is used as the basic concept for widening participation and capacity building. As the center piece of the transition arena the concept of the JPI Urban Europe Stakeholder Involvement Platform (AGORA) will be applied and advanced. Furthermore, the challenge is tackled by professionalising programme management in JPI Urban Europe in order to make research results more easily accessible for policy and decision makers, provide data and cases to easily follow the progress achieved in JPI Urban Europe and its projects and strengthen the programme as a hub for international cooperation. All these activities are tuned to further expand the programme towards Widening Countries and other interested parties, offer information and platforms to engage for researchers, urban pu

FLAG-ERA, the Flagship ERA-NET, gathers national and regional funding organisation with the goal of supporting, together with the European Commission, the FET Flagship initiatives and more generally the FET Flagship programme. Most funding organisations in Europe participate, either directly or as associated members. FLAG-ERA contributes to the construction of the two Flagship initiatives on Graphene and Human Brain research, through a range of activities such as the launch of joint calls supporting transnational projects in synergy with the Flagships, contribution to the Flagship partnering framework, identification of potential partnering projects, information on funding opportunities for the Flagships, and networking events. The activities in FLAG-ERA are organised around periodic events gathering all stakeholders and structured in sessions dedicated to the various objectives and related tasks of the project. FLAG-ERA is implemented as a sequence of ERA-NET projects. FLAG-ERA III is the third ERA-NET project, starting in December 2018 for a period of 6 years, and covering the FLAG-ERA Joint Transnational Calls (JTC) 2019 and JTC 2021.