Today, the Commission initiated 11 new European Partnerships together with industry, to promote investments in research and innovation and to overcome the main climate and sustainability challenges, in order to make Europe the first climate-neutral economy and to deliver on the European Green Deal. The Partnerships will also deliver on the EU's digital ambitions for the next decade, the Europe's Digital Decade. They will receive over €8 billion from Horizon Europe, the EU research and innovation programme for 2021-2027. The total commitments, including those from private partners and from Member States, amount to about €22 billion.

This funding enables the Partnerships to follow innovative solutions, to tackle emissions from energy-intensive industries and hard-to-decarbonise sectors, such as shipping and steel-making, as well as to develop and deploy high-performance batteries, sustainable fuels, artificial intelligence tools, data technologies, robotics, and more. The efforts together with resources and investments will also generate long-term positive impacts, boost European competitiveness and technological sovereignty and create jobs and growth.

The eleven European Partnerships are the following:

1. European Partnership for the European Open Science Cloud - aims to organize an open, trusted virtual environment to enable European researchers to store, share and reuse research data.
2. European Partnership for Artificial Intelligence, Data and Robotics – aims to drive innovation, acceptance and uptake of AI, data and robotics.
3. European Partnership for Photonics (light-based technologies) - aims to speed up photonic innovations.
4. European Partnership for Clean Steel – Low Carbon Steelmaking - supports EU leadership in transforming the steel industry into a carbon-neutral one.
5. European Partnership Made in Europe – aims to boost European leadership in sustainable manufacturing in Europe, by applying the principles of the circular economy and digital transformation.
6. European Partnership Processes4Planet – aims to help European industries to be the leaders on the 2050 climate neutrality goal, with a focus on low-carbon technologies.
7. European Partnership for People-centric Sustainable Built Environment (Built4People) - Its vision is high-quality, low-carbon, energy and resource-efficient built environments, like buildings and infrastructure.
8. European Partnership towards Zero-emission Road Transport (2Zero) - aims to accelerate the development of zero-emission transport.
9. European Partnership for Connected, Cooperative and Automated Mobility - its goal is to accelerate the implementation of innovative, connected, cooperative and automated mobility technologies and services.
10. European Partnership for Batteries: Towards a competitive European industrial battery value chain - aims to support the development of a world-class European research and innovation ecosystem on batteries, and to foster European industrial leadership in the design and production of batteries for the next generation of both stationary and mobile applications.
11. European Partnership for Zero Emission Waterborne Transport - aims for the EU to lead and accelerate the transformation of maritime and inland waterborne transport to eliminate all harmful environmental emissions, including greenhouse gas, air and water pollutants, through innovative technologies.

Image © European Commission, 2021