For the future Europe’s Rail Joint Undertaking to be successful, the innovations stemming from its Master Plan must adhere to the needs of railway stakeholders and final users. Ben@Rail contributes to the success of the new Undertaking by applying a scientifically proven methodology to quantify the efficacy of EU-funded R&I activities. To reach this objective, Ben@Rail will provide evidence-based research to assess the extent to which the foreseen innovations of Shift2Rail and its successor respond to clear societal cases and stakeholders’ and users’ expectations. To achieve this, Ben@Rail, in close cooperation with the European Rail Research Advisory Council (ERRAC), will develop a top-down analysis grounded on two elements. On the one side, the requirements of the rail sector stakeholders vis a vis EU-funded research are identified. On the other side, the sector’s strategic documents are reviewed and analysed in light of the stakeholders’ expected benefits and the wider societal challenges to extract objectives, key technical concepts and development areas that will affect and shape the Railway System of the future. The resulting analysis will assess the adherence of EU-funded R&I activities to the stakeholders’ requirements, thus evaluating the expected outcomes of the future new Joint Undertaking Master Plan. Ben@Rail will develop a scientific, innovative framework for the evaluation of EU-funded projects based on the stakeholders’ requirements. One of the strengths of this framework relies on its possible application in other sectors to comprehensively investigate future funding R&I programmes. Ben@Rail will benefit from a consortium composed of three renowned scientific centres in the field of rail research, committed to the mentioned actions and towards the maximisation of the project’s impacts by communicating and promoting its outcomes to the scientific community, rail stakeholders and policymakers.