Within Horizon Europe, European Research Infrastructure Consortia (ERICs) have a long-standing record of participation, particularly through dedicated INFRA calls under Pillar I (Excellent Science), that supports the development, consolidation, strategic coordination of pan-European research infrastructures and fostering synergies that create a coherent, accessible, and FAIR-data-enabled infrastructure ecosystem.
However, ERICs contribute well beyond their foundational mission. This collection of successful cases, places a strategic emphasis on the growing engagement of ERICs in Pillar II (Global Challenges and European Industrial Competitiveness) and Pillar III (Innovative Europe), in which ERICs directly engage with societal challenges, support technological development, and help bridge the gap between scientific excellence, innovation, and real-world applications.
This collection illustrates the evolving role of ERIC in Europe: not merely as service providers, but as trusted data hubs, integrators of multidisciplinary expertise, and catalysts for collaboration between academia, industry, public authorities and civil society. In many projects, ERICs support evidence-based policymaking, enable access to FAIR data, and contribute to Open Science practices aligned with collaborative and challenge-driven research.
These narratives demonstrate concretely how ERICs turn scientific knowledge and infrastructure capacity into practical benefits for society and the economy. By supporting collaborative projects and sharing expertise, data, and services, ERICs help researchers and innovators work together more effectively across borders and sectors. This includes contributions to digital solutions, data-driven research, and the development of common standards and skills that make collaboration easier and more efficient.
Ultimately, these success cases provide concrete evidence of the added value ERICs bring to the European Research Area and may serve as inspiration for policymakers and stakeholders seeking to better integrate research infrastructures into collaborative, impact-driven activities across the full spectrum of Horizon Europe and in the upcoming framework programme FP10.
The success stories will be actively promoted through the project website and social media channels to increase their visibility across the research infrastructure community and beyond. In addition, they will be shared with National Contact Points (NCPs), where relevant, to support dissemination activities and outreach during their events. Lastly, they will also be used in future events and communication activities involving the ERIC Forum whenever relevant, showcasing the broader impact and engagement of ERICs across Horizon Europe.
The successful cases were compiled as part of the ERIC Forum 2 project, specifically under Work Package 4 (ERICs and European Science Policy & Research Strategy) and Task 4.1 (Promotion and exploitation of ERICs within Horizon Europe outside Pillar I). The collection process involved a targeted call for contributions where ERICs were asked to map their Horizon Europe funded projects across all pillars and select standout projects funded under Pillars II and III to showcase. While the core objective was to highlight impact-driven collaborations in these areas, the scope was broadened to include select, high-impact successful cases from Pillar I where they demonstrated exceptional synergy or foundational value.
Browse the Collected Cases:
AnaEE-ERIC and the AgroServ project
AgroServ aims to provide the scientific community with large, high profile research services to facilitate and enable interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research in agroecology and foster open science and innovation.
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CESSDA and the QUANTUM project
QUANTUM aims to create a common label system for Europe that assesses and communicates the quality and utility of datasets in all countries for scientific and health innovation purposes. These labels will enable researchers, policymakers, and healthcare professionals to identify high-quality data for research and decision-making.
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DARIAH and the ECHOES project
ECHOES aims to create the European Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage (ECCCH) as a shared platform for heritage professionals and researchers to access data, innovative scientific and training resources and advanced digital tools co-developed by the heritage community according to their specific needs.
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EATRIS and the Compass AI project
Compass AI project supports the practical and scalable deployment of AI in healthcare, with a focus on cancer care and remote regions. Building on the FUTURE-AI framework, it brings together a multidisciplinary European community to develop and validate evidence-based AI deployment guidelines through four pilot studies across diverse healthcare settings.
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ECCSEL ERIC and the CCUS ZEN project
CCUS ZEN explores the potential for accelerating deployment of CCUS in two regions with lower maturity level for CCUS compared to the current development in the North Sea region.
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ECRIN-ERIC and the ERA4HEALTH and LIVERATION projects
The ERA4HEALTH Partnership brings the opportunity to strengthen European transnational collaborative research funding by creating a funding body for joint programming in priority areas addressing European public health needs.
LIVERATION aims to conduct an ambitious, pragmatic multicenter clinical trial in patients with colorectal cancer liver metastasis and liver cancer at 20 clinical centres in 7 different countries to determine whether additional ablated margin produced by radiofrequency can decrease the recurrence rate and improve patient survival.
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EMSO-ERIC and the TRIDENT project
The TRIDENT project will create new technological tools for deep sea impact assessment. These new tools will empower a shared responsibility to supervise
and monitor deep sea activities, and simultaneously preserve and enhance marine habitats, supporting an environmentally sustainable blue economy.
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EPOS-ERIC and the EQUIP-G project
The EQUIP-G project marks a major milestone in the advancement of Earth observation technologies in Europe. With a focus on imaging the Earth’s interior through precise gravity measurements, EQUIP-G is developing and deploying a European network of quantum gravimeters — high-performance instruments based on atom interferometry
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European Social Survey ERIC and the Infra4NextGen project
Infra4NextGen is repurposing existing data and collecting new data in line with the five themes of the NextGenerationEU recovery programme: Make it… Digital, Equal, Green, Healthy, and Strong.
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Euro-BioImaging ERIC and the CANDLE, RE-IMAGINE-CROPS, EUCAIM, ILLUMINATE and SCIANCE projects
The CANDLE project will support Member States and Associated Countries in establishing National Cancer Data Nodes (NCDNs) to improve the management, sharing, and reuse of cancer data across Europe. These Nodes will promote harmonisation, interoperability, FAIR data principles, and EHDS-compliant cross-border data access, helping advance cancer research, diagnostics, and treatments.
The RE-IMAGINE-CROPS project will develop a portable rover equipped with Positron Emission Tomography (PET) and Multiphoton Endoscope (ME) technology to measure crop metabolic processes in real-time, from tissue-level resolution at hundreds of micrometers down to subcellular visualization
The EUCAIM project aims to deploy a pan-European federated infrastructure of FAIR, de-identified cancer-related real-world images and linked to clinical data, which will be used for the development of AI tools toward Precision Medicine.
The ILLUMINATE project aims to transform theranostics-based treatment for advanced-stage cancer and increase the availability of lutetium-177. It will advance Metabolic Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MeMRI), to improve patient selection, monitoring, and treatment decisions, with a focus on metastatic prostate cancer.
The SCIANCE is a European coordination initiative establishing the foundations for the Resource for AI Science in Europe (RAISE). Bringing together leading research infrastructures, scientific organisations, and AI centres of excellence, SCIANCE develops a Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA) through an iterative co-creation process.
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ICOS ERIC and the IRISCC project
The project aims to provide scientific and knowledge services to improve Europe’s resilience to climate change by offering a Catalogue of services and a related access management system, with a focus on scientific research and evidence-based policymaking, while ensuring open and accessible data in compliance with FAIR principles.
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