Proposals under this topic should:

A. Foster stakeholder engagement and collaboration:

• Target stakeholders from countries and regions covered by the CBE JU Widening Participation strategy. The participation in the consortia of stakeholders from other countries and regions is encouraged, if aimed at the exchange of best practice and mutual learning and at fostering capacity building.
• The development of joint projects could be promoted, facilitating the exchange of knowledge and collaboration between bio-based clusters in different regions.

B. Develop capacity building and raise awareness

• Provide a support/knowledge transfer platform for all stakeholders in the bio-based economy, especially focussing on attracting newcomers, with a particular attention to industrial representatives. This may cover the creation of an online platform with information resources, webinars or training courses, aiming at the exchange of best practices.
• Incorporate actions on increasing awareness about CBE JU, via a co-creation/participatory/ trust building approach, including in local languages as appropriate. The proposed activities shall leverage on relevant existing national and regional programmes in the bioeconomy sector, to empower the local biobased sectors.
• Provide recommendations for the growth of the bio-based sector and for an increased engagement of all stakeholders in the targeted countries and regions, aimed at policy makers and replicators. Recommendations can also cover any newly identified bottleneck preventing the participation of local stakeholders in bio-based activities to increase their engagement, including information and exchange sharing in local languages, as relevant.

C. Promote synergies

• Synergies with relevant (macro-)regional networks such as the BIOEAST Initiative are encouraged.
• Analyse the possibility of establishing collaborations with relevant bio-based funding programmes at EU, national or regional level with a particular focus on European Structural and Investment Funds (ERDF, ESF+, CF, EAFRD, EMFF), the implementation of Recovery and Resilience Facility and the Just Transition Fund, to maximise the impact of complementary funding in the bio-based sector.
• Synergies with relevant EC funded projects is also expected. An inventory of relevant EC funded projects is included in the CBE JU Widening strategy. This list represent the state of the art and should be considered by the applicants when proposing new measures.
• Proposals may involve financial support to third parties to provide direct support (e.g., in the form of cascading grants) to actions related to teaming. Beneficiaries may provide financial support to third parties. The support to third parties can only be provided in the form of grants. The maximum amount to be granted to each third party is €60.000. A maximum €300.000 of the EU funding can be allocated to this purpose.