AnaEE-ERIC joins call for more coordinated European research infrastructures to tackle climate change and data resilience
—— September 22, 2026. Cork, Ireland
AnaEE-ERIC Director-General Michel Boër took part in the 4th ESFRI Stakeholder Forum Meetup, held this week in Cork, Ireland, contributing to a panel discussion on how integrated access to research infrastructures can be strengthened across Europe.
The panel, part of Session 1 of the Forum — “Access across the Research Infrastructure Landscape” — followed a keynote by Annika Thies (Head of EU Project Office, DESY) on consolidating the research infrastructure landscape through integrated user access programmes.
Drawing on AnaEE’s experience with cross-disciplinary, multi-RI projects such as AgroServ and IRISCC, Boër joined fellow panellists Jonathan Ewbank (Director-General, ERINHA), Sylvain Charbonneau (President and CEO, Canadian Foundation for Innovation), Jimmy Murphy (Professor of Offshore Renewable Energy, UCC, and Co-Director of Rinn Energy), and Barbara Schramm (Head of Department, International Collaboration and Research Funding, Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf) for a discussion moderated by Michael Ryan (Head of International Division, Research Ireland), with ESFRI Vice-Chair Dr. Elena Hoffert as discussant.
Reducing fragmentation
The panel addressed a range of issues central to the future of integrated access, including the shift from individual RI access to coordinated, integrated access programmes; user-centric access and single-entry points; access for industry, including SMEs, startups and scaleups; strengthening the RI–TI continuum; reducing fragmentation across the landscape; and the governance and funding structures needed to sustain access programmes over time.
– The meeting provided the opportunity to discuss how research infrastructures can better address the challenges Europe is facing — climate change, biodiversity loss, new diseases — in an evolving geopolitical environment. We discussed the ways RIs could work in a more integrated and coordinated way, while respecting their diversity, scientific excellence and autonomy.
Dr. Michel Boër
Director General, AnaEE-ERIC
The experience of AnaEE and of the AgroServ project, coordinated by AnaEE-ERIC, was presented. The meeting also addressed the key topic of data resilience, and how to acquire and safeguard data in the event of natural catastrophes or geopolitical instability. RIs role to One Health – the combined health of humans, animals and ecosystems – was also addressed.
The discussion comes weeks after European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen used her 2026 State of the Union address to warn that Europe is warming at twice the global average, and to announce a new EU framework for climate resilience — including the identification of the 100 most vulnerable territories in Europe and a forthcoming European Heatwave Plan. Von der Leyen stressed that mitigation and adaptation must reinforce each other, and pointed to gaps in catastrophe insurance and water infrastructure as areas requiring urgent EU-level action.
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Looking ahead: AnaEE-ERIC will explore these themes further at its upcoming science conference 2026, where AgroServ and Microbes4Climate will co-host a workshop (also available online) highlighting the contribution of Transnational Access (TNA) to research in these fields, through the experiences of researchers who have benefited from access provided by both projects.
