New Policy Brief Highlights the Strategic Importance of Twinning for Europe’s Research Excellence
A newly released policy brief titled “Twinning for Europe’s Competitiveness” brings together evidence from a wide range of Twinning projects, spanning fields such as environmental monitoring, neuroscience, business innovation, and cultural heritage, to show how the instrument has significantly strengthened research excellence, institutional capacity, and cross-border collaboration across Europe.
The brief emphasizes the need to restore annual Twinning calls under the WIDERA Work Programme in order to maintain the progress achieved since Horizon 2020 and avoid setbacks in research capacity. It also proposes practical recommendations for shaping future Twinning schemes, highlighting sustainability, reciprocal benefits for Widening and non-Widening countries, and stronger alignment with initiatives such as Excellence Hubs, Pillar II actions, and the European Innovation Council.
Produced collaboratively by the teams behind GEMSTONE, BAANG, EarthBridge, HybridNeuro, REMODEL, REMOTE XUAR, SMART4ENV, and TwinVECTOR, the publication reflects a unified voice from the Widening community. It demonstrates how well-structured Twinning projects contribute to long-term scientific excellence, institutional development, and policy engagement.
The brief is intended for European policymakers, National Contact Points, research funding organisations, and all stakeholders involved in shaping Horizon Europe and the future of the European Research Area.
We sincerely congratulate all project partners who contributed to the preparation of this policy brief. Their strong coordination, interdisciplinary effort, and commitment to supporting the Twinning community have resulted in an exemplary publication. We extend our appreciation to the project coordinators and consortium partners for their valuable scientific and strategic contributions!
In order to reach the documents please follow this link: