Caution: JavaScript execution is disabled in your browser or for this website. You may not be able to answer all questions in this survey. Please, verify your browser parameters.

Consultation for the Strategic Research & Innovation Agenda

Welcome to the Sustainable Blue Economy Partnership!

Co-owned by participating countries, regional sea basins, and the European Commission, the Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA) is the framework of reference of the co-funded Horizon Europe Sustainable Blue Economy Partnership (SBEP), a collaborative initiative joined by 32 countries and the European Commission. Focusing on impact-driven maritime research and innovation (R&I), the Partnership harmonises sustainable blue economy priorities and delivers impactful green and digital solutions towards joint objectives.

As part of the strategic co-design, we are inviting you to contribute to the update of the current SRIA (2024-2026) by replying to this consultation.

The deadline for submitting your response online is Friday 11 September 2026, noon (CEST).

The consultation is open to all interested stakeholders as well as the partners of the SBEP. It will take about 30-60 minutes to complete.

The consultation aids improving the way the SRIA addresses the triple planetary crisis - climate change, pollution, biodiversity loss - while simultaneously securing European sustainability, competitiveness, and security through research and innovation and data-driven marine knowledge for coherent governance. Moreover, beyond immediate feedback toward the SRIA update set for release in 2027, the consultation supports shaping a long-term strategic narrative for the future ocean economy R&I, with the ambition to enhance Europe’s overall resilience, well-being of societies, competitiveness and strategic autonomy and help our partners achieving environmental and climate goals.

By sharing your insights and valuable perspective you directly help shaping the future of our oceans and securing European competitiveness in the years ahead.

We encourage you to disseminate the survey to interested stakeholders in your country and the ministries, national SBEP / blue economy mirror groups, potential R&I funders, relevant technology clusters, as well as representatives of the private sector and civil societies.

If you have any questions regarding the survey, please don’t hesitate to contact Benjamin Kürten (b.kuerten@ptj.de) or Careen Krüger (c.krueger@ptj.de).

 

Thank you in advance for your contribution!

 

On behalf of the team for the Strategic co-design,
Benjamin Kürten

 

 

Background

Operating under the guiding motif of ‘competitiveness through sustainability’, the Partnership seeks to outline an updated SRIA in support of and alignment with the strategic imperatives of the EU Ocean Pact[1], including the EU ocean observation initiative OceanEye[2], the Ocean and Water Research and Innovation Strategy OWRIS[3], the EU Clean Industrial Deal, and the European Competitiveness Compass (ECC)[4], as well as the European Innovation Council (EIC) funding program and the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) Knowledge and Innovation Community (EIT Water)[5] to span the full R&I value chain. By adopting a comprehensive source-to-sea approach, the updated strategy will not only strengthen Europe’s leadership role in ocean and water science, innovation, and technological development, but also align with the Strategy on Sustainable Ocean Planning and Management (SOPM) adopted by the Member States of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO (UNESCO-IOC) [6].

 

 

[1] European Commission. (2025). The European Ocean Pact (COM(2025) 281 final). https://oceans-and-fisheries.ec.europa.eu/european-ocean-pact_en

[2] https://oceans-and-fisheries.ec.europa.eu/science-observation-and-data/oceaneye_en

[3] https://research-and-innovation.ec.europa.eu/news/all-research-and-innovation-news/commission-launches-two-calls-evidence-future-ocean-and-water-research-and-innovation-strategy-2026-06-15_en

[4] European Commission, A Competitiveness Compass for the EU, COM(2025), Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg. Available at: https://op.europa.eu/publication-detail/-/publication/40feee06-e38c-11ef-be2a-01aa75ed71a1

[5] European Institute of Innovation and Technology. (2025). EIT Water: Knowledge and Innovation Community. https://www.eit.europa.eu/our-activities/call-for-eit-communities/eit-water

[6] https://www.ioc.unesco.org/en/ioc-sopm-strategy

There are 26 questions in this survey.
This survey is anonymous.

The record of your survey responses does not contain any identifying information about you, unless a specific survey question explicitly asked for it.

If you used an identifying access code to access this survey, please rest assured that this code will not be stored together with your responses. It is managed in a separate database and will only be updated to indicate whether you did (or did not) complete this survey. There is no way of matching identification access codes with survey responses.

Privacy policy

SBEP Strategic Consultation (LimeSurvey)

Note: Because this consultation is strictly anonymous and utilises LimeSurvey's privacy-preserving features, standard GDPR clauses regarding the processing, retention, and deletion of personal data are replaced with technical guarantees of anonymity.

 

Privacy & Anonymity Policy for the SBEP SRIA 2027 Strategic Consultation

1. Introduction and Data Controller: This strategic consultation is conducted by Projektträger Jülich, Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH (PtJ) to gather expert insights for the Sustainable Blue Economy Partnership (SBEP). We are committed to absolute data privacy. This survey is designed to collect purely structural and thematic feedback without capturing personal data. The entity responsible for the technical provision of this consultation platform is:

  • Organisation: Projektträger Jülich (PtJ), Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH (FZJ) 
  • Address: Wilhelm-Johnen-Straße, 52428 Jülich, Germany
  • Websites: www.ptj.de 

 

2. Purpose of the Consultation: The insights gathered through this platform will be used exclusively to identify knowledge gaps, aggregate strategic feedback, and shape the future programming of the Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA 2027).

 

3. Principle of Strict Anonymity (Zero Personal Data Collection): We do not collect, process, or store personal data (such as names, email addresses, or demographic identifiers) within this survey. To guarantee your privacy, this consultation utilizes the following strict technical parameters via LimeSurvey:

  • Full Response Anonymisation: The survey is configured as a completely anonymous study. If participant tokens are used for access control, the link between the token and your answers is technically severed upon submission. It is impossible to connect your identity to your submitted data.
  • No IP Tracking: The recording of participant IP addresses is entirely deactivated. Your network address is neither captured nor stored in our databases.
  • No Referrer URL Logging: We do not store the referrer URL (the webpage you visited prior to opening this survey), preventing any behavioural tracking across sites.

 

4. Technical & Organisational Security Measures: While no personal data is collected, the aggregated consultation data is protected against unauthorised access or data breaches:

  • Database Encryption: Sensitive data fields and open text responses are encrypted directly within the database, ensuring that unauthorised third parties cannot read the information even in the event of a server breach.
  • Strict Access Control: Access to the survey infrastructure and the aggregated results is strictly restricted to authorised administrators and is protected by multi-factor authentication.
  • GDPR-Compliant Hosting: All survey data is hosted on secure servers located within the European Union (EU), ensuring full compliance with European data security standards.

 

5. Third Parties and Data Sharing Because no personal data is collected, no personal data is shared. The fully anonymised, aggregated results and synthesised high-level reports will be shared with the SBEP consortium and relevant European stakeholders for drafting the SRIA 2027.

 

6. Data Subject Rights (Limitation under Art. 11 GDPR) Under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), data subjects have rights regarding their personal data (such as access, rectification, or erasure). However, because this survey is strictly anonymous and we collect no identifying information, we cannot identify individual respondents. Therefore, pursuant to Article 11 GDPR, requests to access, modify, or delete specific survey responses cannot be fulfilled once the survey is submitted, as it is technically impossible to isolate your specific answers.

 

7. Contact for Privacy Inquiries: If you have general questions regarding our data protection standards or the security of this platform, you may contact the Data Protection Officer of Forschungszentrum Jülich:

  • Name: Markus Weuthen
  • Email: DSB@fz-juelich.de
  • Address: Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, Wilhelm-Johnen-Straße, 52428 Jülich, Germany
 
Close