Towards the Implementation of an EU Strategy for Technology Infrastructures. Insights for the implementation of the ERA Policy Agenda

Technology Infrastructures (TIs) are essential enablers for Europe to deliver on its ambitions of making successful transitions to a sustainable, digital and resilient industry and society. With rising technological complexity, industry’s innovation capacity, productivity and international competitiveness heavily depend on possibilities to develop, test, validate and upscale new technological solutions with new levels of speed. For this, TIs are critical enablers in European RD&I ecosystems. TIs are facilities and equipment, such as demonstrators, testbeds, piloting facilities and living labs, capable of building bridges between science and the market. In this context, the JRC and EARTO launched a joint project on TIs to gather evidence and highlight the common specificities of TIs across Europe, assess the challenges they face over their whole lifecycle, and identify how their capacity could be further leveraged. The main methodology used to collect input for this project includes a detailed questionnaire sent to TIs managers, and a joint JRC-EARTO dedicated workshop with 49 experts on TIs, among others. The present report provides recommendations drawn from TI managers and users as well as policy makers to support the implementation of the ERA Action plan towards an integrated European landscape for TIs in the next three years.https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2760/761184