ESEIA Leads Policy Barriers Analysis in the INITIATE Horizon Europe Project
ESEIA continues to play a central role in the Horizon Europe project INITIATE by leading the development of Deliverable D1.2 – Report on Policy Barriers and Requirements, a publicly available report examining the challenges and opportunities facing research and innovation ecosystems in widening countries. This publicly available deliverable, submitted in October 2024, positions ESEIA at the centre of a major European effort to strengthen research and innovation in higher education institutions across Widening Countries.
What is INITIATE?
INITIATE — Supporting European R&I Through Stakeholder Collaboration and Institutional Reform — is a Horizon Europe project bringing together 13 partners from 10 countries, including Croatia, Cyprus, Portugal, Romania, North Macedonia, Serbia, Slovenia, Ukraine, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Austria. The consortium spans higher education institutions, research organisations, and businesses, with ESEIA serving as a core partner and Lead for Deliverable D1.2.
The project’s overarching goal is to close the innovation gap between EU Widening Countries and more advanced Member States, empowering higher education institutions (HEIs) to become stronger actors in Europe’s green and digital transitions.
ESEIA’s Role: Leading the Policy Analysis
As Lead Partner for D1.2, ESEIA coordinated the analysis of policy barriers, opportunities, and requirements facing HEIs across eight Widening Countries — Cyprus, Croatia, North Macedonia, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, and Ukraine — with Austria serving as a non-Widening reference country.
The report is authored by Brigitte Hasewend, ESEIA Director, AT, in collaboration with Brian Norton, ESEIA President, TU Dublin, IE. The deliverable explores three interconnected dimensions: the green transition (GT), the digital transition (DT), and research and innovation in higher education. For each, it maps both external policy environments and internal institutional conditions across countries, identifying recurring barriers as well as concrete opportunities and ongoing initiatives.
Key Findings
The report identifies common barriers shared across Widening Countries — including insufficient funding, outdated infrastructure, regulatory fragmentation, weak academia-industry links, and internal institutional inertia. At the same time, it highlights a clear pathway forward, built around seven key requirements: developing institutional frameworks and research infrastructures, creating innovative education and training, building R&I capacity, overcoming policy barriers, nourishing local ecosystems, boosting R&I impact, and enhancing cooperation with international alliances.
On this last point, ESEIA is explicitly named as a model and enabler. The report concludes that HEIs in Widening Countries should actively engage with European thematic alliances like ESEIA, which provide access to funding, cutting-edge technologies, and global networks, enabling institutions to advance both the green and digital transitions.
The INITIATE project continues its work through the UNITE! Widening Brussels Conference (17–18 June 2026), where ESEIA Director Brigitte Hasewend will represent the project and its findings. The deliverable’s framework is now being used to guide the project’s further activities, including the development of good practices, requirements for institutional transformation, and policy recommendations targeting a future HEI ecosystem.
The full D1.2 deliverable is publicly available here.
INITIATE has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 101136775.
