As a 7-year strategic framework this Framework Partnership Agreement (FPA) outlines the overall direction, objectives and impacts without detailing specific deliverables or milestones that will follow in subsequent Grant Agreements (SGAs) that will be actioned under the FPA. In this FPA, the GÉANT consortium of European NRENs propose to evolve the European Communications Commons to provide secure, cost-effective, highly available and reliable services for very high-speed connectivity, identity inter-federation, mobility, security and trust services and solutions; increasing creativity and efficiency of research and ensuring the digital continuum of services to R&E users anywhere in the EU, bridging the divide between developed and less-developed regions. The connectivity and associated services provided are indispensable for seamless, unimpeded access to relevant data, as well as exploitation and management of data generated by European researchers in almost all large research infrastructures. Thanks to successful collaboration between the EC, the GÉANT consortium of NRENs, and their users, these services are second to none, and routinely surpass those of international counterparts. One of the most successful attributes of the GÉANT consortium representing the Research and Education Networks of 44 countries across Europe is the proven ability to agree common interests, while promoting individual or group-led innovations and sharing costs across a diversified membership. GÉANT works with a wide variety of European and global stakeholders to ensure future user requirements for infrastructure are met in a cost-effective and interoperable way. The expertise of hundreds of professionals in R&E networking and industry will be mobilised through the SGAs following this FPA. The GÉANT partners are confident that their joint experience and the leadership of the GÉANT Association will facilitate a successful and impactful execution of a series of SGAs under the proposed FPA.

Under the new 72-month GN5 Framework Partnership Agreement in Horizon Europe (GN5-FPA), this proposal responds to Horizon Europe Call HORIZON-INFRA-2021-NET-01-SGA-2 (Work Programme ’21-22 Other Actions: 2. SGA for investments on International connectivity and collaboration), received 1 February 2022. GN5-IC1 sets out a new plan and implementation for the first phase of a new intercontinental connectivity investment programme, meeting the huge growth in network capacity demands and leading the network through a paradigm shift in the digital science and computational infrastructures in the next 10 to 15 years. It builds on the successful and relevant experience in planning and procuring and introducing into operation direct intercontinental links, such as BELLA S1, as well as a number of other existing bilateral and reciprocal arrangements for operational links negotiated with other intercontinental partners. This project will help ensure sufficient capacity is put in place through procurements and implementations of links during the project term or through setting a roadmap for future investments beyond this timeframe. The GÉANT Consortium has a long established and successful track record in securing long-term intercontinental network connectivity, interconnecting with an increasing number of gateways in the network, in co-ordination with global peers. Applying proven skills and expertise, GÉANT is well placed to maximise the value of the links to be procured, with innovative contracts and to secure reciprocal global peering contributions to increase the impact of the resources available in GN5-IC1.

OpenAIRE2020 represents a pivotal phase in the long-term effort to implement and strengthen the impact of the Open Access (OA) policies of the European Commission (EC), building on the achievements of the OpenAIRE projects. OpenAIRE2020 will expand and leverage its focus from (1) the agents and resources of scholarly communication to workflows and processes, (2) from publications to data, software, and other research outputs, and the links between them, and (3) strengthen the relationship of European OA infrastructures with other regions of the world, in particular Latin America and the U.S. Through these efforts OpenAIRE2020 will truly support and accelerate Open Science and Scholarship, of which Open Access is of fundamental importance. OpenAIRE2020 continues and extends OpenAIRE’s scholarly communication infrastructure to manage and monitor the outcomes of EC-funded research. It combines its substantial networking capacities and technical capabilities to deliver a robust infrastructure offering support for the Open Access policies in Horizon 2020, via a range of pan-European outreach activities and a suite of services for key stakeholders. It provides researcher support and services for the Open Data Pilot and investigates its legal ramifications. The project offers to national funders the ability to implement OpenAIRE services to monitor research output, whilst new impact measures for research are investigated. OpenAIRE2020 engages with innovative publishing and data initiatives via studies and pilots. By liaising with global infrastructures, it ensures international interoperability of repositories and their valuable OA contents. To ensure sustainability and long-term health for the overall OpenAIRE infrastructure, the proposed OpenAIRE2020 project will establish itself as a legal entity, which will manage the production-level responsibilities securing 24/7 reliability and continuity to all relevant user groups, data providers and other stakeholders.

Under GN5-FPA, GN5-2 continues delivering expanded, cost effective, secure and resilient connectivity for unconstrained capacity ahead of demand in the backbone network and NREN access in multiples of 100Gbps targeting Terabit/s connectivity where needed. GN5-2 will scale its digital service portfolio to changing environments, by prototyping, piloting and, where appropriate, procuring new online above-the-net services to enable researchers and students’ access to applications that support multidomain data-driven, evidence-based and effective collaboration across virtual research teams, worldwide. It will deliver pervasive, innovative and distributed trust and identity infrastructure and services taking into account Open Science and eIDAS, to achieve strategic positioning of T&I as a key enabler of research and education collaboration within Europe. GN5-2 will reinforce the network security and its operation in a federated approach, and foster collaborations to innovate and strengthen Europe’s sustainable connectivity with other world regions. GN5-2 will address Horizon Europe’s priorities in areas such as data security and access control, innovation, inclusion, and DNSH, and will expand NRENs' users beyond traditional scientific and research communities, enabling networking and access to the common European data spaces, and preparing non-traditional use of fiber: sensing technologies, Quantum, Time/Frequency distribution. GN5-2 will ensure access to the valued services required for Open Science, disseminate learning and training, and build community as well as align with EU policies and ongoing participation with standardisation bodies. GN5-2 can offer its distinctive services due to its human network of professionals, in a consortium with a deep understanding of evolving user requirements. Knowledge and experience are shared within this community, to constantly enhance quality and security of services indispensable to the ERA, instrumental to EU strategic autonomy