The EU helps bold ideas grow into transformative innovation. With its support, entrepreneurs are building new industries, advancing technology and driving smarter, fairer growth. Innovators in action, powering the breakthroughs of tomorrow.
Innovators in Bulgaria are transforming cargo aviation, creating smarter and more efficient delivery solutions. The Black Swan aircraft carries up to 350 kg over 2,500 km, the distance from Sofia to Dublin, connecting cities and remote areas while reducing costs and emissions.
By bridging distances, this innovation delivers reliable, cost-efficient, same-day delivery, showing how EU-supported initiatives are shaping the future of logistics and trade.
The people who benefit most from this technology are those living in remote regions or areas without reliable transport, or perhaps on an island with limited infrastructure.
An initiative led by innovators in France is showing how airports can implement practical solutions.
Supported by the EU, it brings together research institutes, airports, SMEs and large companies, testing solutions such as solar panels on boarding bridges, low-carbon materials for runways and sustainable aviation fuel to protect biodiversity.
We design a project that unifies collective energy to fast-track innovative and concrete solutions for maximum environmental performance.
Other project examples
Each year, 20 million or more people in Europe are estimated to fall ill from eating contaminated food, with increasingly complex and globalised food supply chains creating an additional challenge. Research work has brought together a range of academic, research and industry organisations from across the continent to develop cutting-edge digital tools addressing this issue. Their mission is to provide a proactive system for detecting and managing emerging hazards.
Amid a continued rise in global demand for seafood and aquaculture products, European consumers are also paying greater attention to the safety, quality, freshness and traceability of produce. In light of this, 22 organisations in 14 countries have come together to develop tools and models that promote best practices for sustainable, high-end farmed seafood in EU-supported research.
In 2024, a common EU platform entered into operation for sharing information between maritime authorities to combat the likes of people smuggling, illegal fishing, pollution and security threats. This will aid better cooperation across the region’s seas through information- and data-sharing, following a crucial milestone in the network’s formation in wide-reaching EU-supported research work, which ended in 2018.
After a common EU platform for tackling threats at sea like smuggling and illegal fishing was launched in 2024, the next stage was to integrate surveillance seamlessly with border control and customs agencies. A pan-European collaboration has been working to enhance border management and deal with illegal activities such as cross-border trafficking.
Current methods of producing animal protein are unsustainable for both the environment and the world’s growing population. An Irish-led research effort brought together scientists and experts from multiple countries in Europe and globally to investigate how well chickpeas, lentils, fava beans and quinoa grow in diverse environments to help create alternative protein sources.
The microscopic quantum realm is a growing area of interest due to its potential for creating a whole range of new applications in optics and IT. Led by Italy, multi-country collaborative research work is aimed at advancing the field of quantum technology through a novel approach for sensing and generating quantum states of light. This could pave the way for state-of-the-art computing and sensing technologies, including optical neural networks to power AI.
Current methods of producing animal protein are unsustainable for both the environment and the world’s growing population. An EU-supported research collaboration is exploring how to incorporate non-animal-based proteins into popular foods and make them a mainstream part of diets, while minimising noticeable changes to consumers’ diets.
One of the EU’s aims is the development of scientific excellence and training through collaboration between institutions and countries. An EU-supported effort demonstrated how the expertise of top European partners can breathe life into a young aspiring institute. The focus of the research was on upgrading Slovakia’s Centre of Excellence for Ceramics, Glass and Silicate Materials in the city of Trenčín with mentorship from collaborators in Germany, Italy and Spain. This extended the boundaries of knowledge in a range of materials-related areas.
Counterfeit spirits and wine are estimated to cost European businesses €1.3 billion a year. To tackle this, EU-supported research saw the development of smart tags for bottles that use blockchain technology to confirm the wine’s unique chemical signature. This ‘digital fingerprint’ can help assure consumers that they are drinking a genuine product.
Wearable health-tracking devices like smartwatches have been on the market for some time, but moves are now being made to progress to sensor-implanted devices worn on our clothing and skin, and even in our bodies. EU-supported research work explored the use of soft, comfortable and durable smart patches for sports, health and medical uses.
Packaging materials made of polymers can last in the environment for hundreds of years, leading to research into alternatives that can be easily broken down by microorganisms in soil. Researchers investigated the use of bacteria for efficiently turning methane into a biopolymer that has already found application in industry, medicine and pharmaceuticals.
Increasingly advanced robotics are improving the prospects for exploring planetary surfaces, paving the way for complex future missions in space. The likes of lava tubes – underground planetary caves formed by hot flowing lava – are sites of scientific interest on the moon and Mars, but they are also protected places to potentially store equipment or even support future human habitats.
Researchers demonstrated the potential of an AI-enabled robot team to investigate such features, successfully using them to explore a lava cave and mineshaft on Earth.
Many mysteries remain about the origins of stars, despite significant progress in space research in recent years. Among the challenges has been seeing how mass is distributed within clusters of stars during their formation. Researchers gained insights by training a neural network to aid identification by singling out objects in images.
Apart from finding further clues on star formation, one of their most exciting discoveries was around 70 to 170 free-floating planets unbound to any star.
Geophysicists have sought for many decades to predict earthquakes, but success in this endeavour has largely proved elusive. To gain a better understanding of the related physical processes deep within the earth, researchers used AI to analyse a huge set of data from high-quality seismic observations saved in large data banks.
Apart from improving learning on the evolution of faults and processes taking place underground, the project developed a technique to help detect and locate small earthquakes.