European Road Transport Research Opportunities – A meeting to the attention of Polish stakeholders
On 21st May 2021, the European Green Vehicles Initiative Association organised, together with the Cracow University of Technology, an online event dealing with “European Road Transport Research Opportunities” to the attention of Polish stakeholders.
As previously organised in some other EU Member States, the aim of this online event was to raise local stakeholders’ attention on the opportunities existing at European level for research and innovation activities in road transport related fields, and get more active contribution from local stakeholders to the activities performed at European level.
The event started with two opening speeches from the organisers. Marek Brzezanski welcomed all participants in the online meeting and thanked EGVIA for deciding to contact Cracow university and organising the event in a remote way; Stephan Neugebauer highlighted the challenges currently faced in road transport: decarbonisation and digitalisation and stress the need to involve Polish stakeholders in our activities.
Philippe Froissard reminded the audience about the overall EU strategy, particularly related to transport, and explain how the Horizon Europe programme and future partnerships could help: opportunities are existing for all TRLs, broken down along the three pillars of Horizon Europe. He also stressed the additional opportunities that might emerge from the use of the structural funds and the role of the Recovery and Resilience Facility in the upscaling of innovation.
Two speeches have been given from Polish representatives setting the scene of the national situation. Zbigniew Turek provided an extensive overview of the transport related programmes available at national level. He also stressed the added value that may arise from the future “States Representatives Group” in EU co-programmed partnerships aiming at strengthening the collaboration and reinforcing synergies between EU and national activities. Marek Popiołek spoke about the major transformations still ahead of us and the strong interconnections needed among several areas to be successful. He also highlighted the expertise available in Poland related to the production of electric vehicles, particularly buses, as well as in batteries production.
The event continued with an overall presentation of the Towards zero emission road transport partnership (2Zero) from Jean-Luc di Paola-Galloni. He presented the history, the scope, the objectives as well as the structure of the soon-to-be launched co-programmed partnership. In addition, he also provided more information to the audience about ERTARC activities (the European Technology Platform for road transport). His presentation was followed-up by an overview of the content of two other co-programmed partnerships covering road transport: Connected, Cooperative and Automated Mobility (CCAM), presented by Marzena Jougounoux as well as the Batteries for Europe (BATT4EU) presented by Philippe Jacques.
The two final presentations provided the audience with more information about the upcoming funding priorities (2021 / 2022) identified following the co-design and co-creation approach, a novelty under the Horizon Europe Programme (Guido Sacchetto) and an overview of the opportunities to get involved at EU level and in future co-programmed partnerships (Lucie Beaumel).
Stephan Neugebauer closed the event inviting all the 56 attendants to join upcoming activities in the future. “We need you in this community!”.