Improving national AKIS organisation in a co-creative process across the EU

Proposals should address the following activities:

• Compare the various types of AKIS[[Art 3 and 102 of the CAP post-2020 proposal]] within the EU at national, regional and local level to discover how they effectively and efficiently enhance interaction between AKIS actors through activities at various geographical levels. Special attention shall be paid to making practice-oriented information and knowledge better available, shared and accessible and on how to improve knowledge flows between AKIS actors, including informing research on needs from practice and finding ways to reward scientists for results useable in practice in particular. Project activities should help learning processes for practitioners within the country and regions, as well as support them to benefit from well-functioning AKISs. Project proposals must also support development of various cross-border approaches between AKISs to enhance knowledge flows and initiatives to incentivise innovation projects among countries and regions within the EU, and to learn from each other.
• A specific part of the project should be dedicated to sharing the various ways and good examples of how advisors can be intensively integrated in AKIS[[advisors’ integration within AKIS is a newly introduced obligation in Art 13(2) as also measured by result indicator 2 ]] , including for innovation support[[Art 13(4) of the CAP post 2020 proposal]].
• Assess current AKIS, using practical tools and indicators capable of monitoring the functioning of Member States’ AKIS. This should include institutional arrangements and ways to stimulate researchers to exchange information with practice and have an effective impact on the transition to a more sustainable agriculture by adjusting the focus of their research to more practical approaches and interaction with practice. Provide advice and support on how to measure improving the functioning of the AKIS, making use of a coherent and effective approach while taking into account the national/regional/local historical and cultural contexts.
• Provide all outcomes and materials to the European Innovation Partnership 'Agricultural Productivity and Sustainability' (EIP-AGRI), including in the common 'practice abstract' format for EU wide dissemination, as well as to national/regional/local AKIS channels and to the EU-wide interactive knowledge reservoir (HORIZON-CL6-2021-GOVERNANCE-01-24) in the requested formats.
• Cover all 27 EU Member State in the project, and make use in all those countries of experts who understand and are able to make an accurate interpretation of the national/regional contexts of practitioners. Use the knowledge and innovation experts in the SCAR-AKIS Strategic Working Group to discuss the project’s strategy and progress in the various stages of the project. Projects should have a minimum duration of 7 years and must implement the multi-actor approach. Since innovation support is an essential element in a well-functioning AKIS, cooperation with the project under HORIZON-CL6-2021-GOVERNANCE-01-26 is expected.