BRUSSELS — Representatives from 33 Horizon Europe-funded projects gathered on 26–27 June for the fourth annual coordination meeting of the EOSC-related projects. The meeting built on past coordination efforts to align strategies, reinforce collaboration, and integrate the newest set of projects funded under the 2024 calls.
Convened by the European Commission (EC), and including representatives of the EOSC Association (EOSC-A), the two-day meeting was held in the context of EOSC’s transition toward an operational infrastructure—the EOSC Federation—which when launched later this year will mark the most significant milestone to date in the development of a federated, sustainable European network between data repositories and services.
The view from the Partnership
The two opening plenaries of the meeting offered high-level perspectives from the two parties to the Horizon Europe Co-Programmed Partnership for EOSC, the EC and EOSC-A, as well as a full update on progress in the build-up phase of the EOSC Federation. The EC’s European Research Area and Innovation Acting Director Jean-David Malo and Open Science and Research Infrastructures Head of Unit Michael Arentoft welcomed the participants, providing an overview of the ongoing strategy discussions at the Commission concerning Europe’s research and technology infrastructures. They were joined by EOSC-A President Karel Luyben, who gave an update from the Association’s perspective, with special emphasis on the build-up of the Federation.
Fresh off the EOSC Federation Build-Up Group’s first in-person meeting in Krakow, Bob Jones (EOSC-A), who co-chairs the Group, gave an update on the work of the 13 candidate EOSC Nodes toward the anticipated launch of the EOSC Federation at the EOSC Symposium in November 2025. Meanwhile, Peter Szegedi (DG CNECT) reported on recent updates to the EOSC EU Node, a reference node in the EOSC Federation’s operational architecture.
In the afternoon session, the EC laid out its plans for supporting the next steps of the EOSC Federation through €106.5 million under the INFRAEOSC 2025 call, and pointed out how EOSC’s inclusion in high-level EU policy documents, such as AI strategy papers, signals growing institutional recognition of its importance.
New projects reflect a maturing EOSC
Among the 33 projects represented, 10 newly funded projects, launched or scheduled to be launched in 2025, were introduced. These include:
- FAIR2Adapt and CLIMATE-ADAPT4EOSC, focusing on making climate adaptation data more accessible and usable by European regions.
- FIDELIS and EOSC EDEN, enhancing long-term data preservation across Europe.
- DataGEMS, LUMEN, EOSC Data Commons, and RAISE Suite, offering services for data discovery, federated reuse, and machine-actionable data management.
- The Coordination and Support Actions (CSAs), EOSC Gravity and EOSC United.
These projects reflect EOSC’s expanding scope, from domain-specific applications to foundational infrastructure for research data management.
Through mechanisms developed by EOSC Focus and carried through by EOSC Gravity, each of the new projects is being onboarded into the Partnership’s collaboration framework. These were presented on the second day of the meeting, and include the co-branding of the projects, the EOSC Opportunity Area Expert Groups, the EOSC Macro-Roadmap, and the cross-project working groups on impact, communications and engagement, and technology.
Sustaining the EOSC ecosystem: Gravity and United
The two CSA’s, EOSC Gravity and EOSC United, are both coordinated by the EOSC Association and are set to play crucial roles in guiding the EOSC Federation’s next steps.
EOSC Gravity, which kicked-off in June 2025, will launch open calls in late 2025 to support preparatory work for the creation and enrolment of future EOSC Nodes, as well as to support the implementation of the Federation’s scientific use cases and onboarding of resources. The project will also sustain engagement activities initiated by EOSC Focus, organise flagship events like the EOSC Symposium and the EOSC Winter School, and facilitate the production of the Partnership’s next Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda, SRIA 2.0.
EOSC United, launching in September 2025, will focus on consolidating early successes of the EOSC Federation, providing feedback on the EOSC EU Node’s evolution and helping shape the EOSC Federation’s governance and operational framework.
Focus areas: Sustainability, uptake, and interoperability
Through three breakout sessions, the projects presented the ways in which they are contributing to solving three major challenges facing the EOSC Federation: sustainability of project results within the Federation; adoption and uptake of EOSC by scientific communities; and the interoperability of EOSC. The outcomes of those discussions can be summarised as follows:
- Sustainability: Participants discussed tools to catalogue and support long-term viability of project results. Governance, operational funding, and continued community support were identified as essential, while the lack of incentives post-project remains an area for improvement.
- Uptake and adoption: User experience and community engagement were deemed vital to drive broader adoption, as was exploring diverse funding pathways, including integration into national platforms or spin-offs.
- Interoperability: Legal, organisational, semantic, and technical complexities continue to challenge integration across disciplines. Community-led efforts, incremental approaches, and reuse of existing interoperability tools and frameworks were recommended.
The view from the countries
Following a plenary discussion on the previous day’s breakout sessions, EOSC Steering Board Co-Chair Volker Beckmann, emphasised the critical role of national and institutional investments in sustaining EOSC. Pointing out that most of the Partnership’s funding comes from national research budgets, Beckmann put heavy emphasis on aligning EOSC outputs with national priorities and strategies such as the ESFRI Roadmap.
Beckmann characterised this alignment as essential for the Federation’s impact and sustainability, encouraging projects to plan the uptake of their own sustainable results in advance by moving quickly to work with national and institutional stakeholders already in the project’s beginnings. Horizon Europe, Beckmann noted, should be seen primarily as a development enabler rather than a long-term operational funder.
Looking ahead
Closing the meeting with a look ahead from the EC, Deputy Head of Unit for Open Science and Research Infrastructures Dejan Dvoršek began by praising the Partnership for bringing EOSC to its advanced state of maturity. He cited in particular the tangible progress of the EOSC EU Node and the Federation’s visible momentum toward operations. He encouraged the community to build on this foundation and work together to make EOSC not just a well-known initiative, but most importantly a widely used infrastructure.
The coordination meeting emphasised that EOSC is entering a decisive new phase where EU project activities must translate into sustainable and exploitable results for the Federation. With the groundwork laid, and a growing ecosystem of players, EOSC’s vision of a European research data commons is becoming reality.
