What is the Thematic Annual Programming (TAP)?
The BLUECO TAP (Thematic Annual Programming) is an initiative designed to strengthen collaboration between research projects already funded at national level. It is a way to create an added value from existing projects by bringing researchers together in a structured network. It creates a light but effective framework for networking across projects that address a common theme. The goal is not to duplicate research efforts, but to bring together researchers and projects, connect knowledge, and ensure that the scientific outputs are visible and impactful at the European level.
The TAP aims to build a dynamic community around a shared thematic area, in order to:
- Provide a space for exchange, sharing of results, experiences and good practices between nationally funded projects
- Support you to capitalize the results and make them accessible beyond the individual projects
- Produce relevant scientific and policy-oriented documents such as knowledge syntheses, recommendations, or joint high-impact scientific publications
- Promote mobility and capacity building
- Identify opportunities for collaborative research projects and common responses to calls for proposals
- The BLUECO-TAP is part of the Partnership additional activities and will run for two years, from February 2026 to February 2028.
Thematic focus
The general theme addressed by BLUECO-TAP is “Building resilience of coastal and marine socio-ecosystems under multiple pressures to support a sustainable blue economy in a changing world”.
The TAP projects specifically target complex marine and coastal socio-ecosystems from a holistic, trans and multi-disciplinary perspective considering multiple dimensions (environmental social, economic, legal) and involving quadruple-helix stakeholders (researchers, policy makers, industry, and civil society) for informed adaptive planning and management.
The projects involved in BLUECO TAP cover a range of complementary research activities related to:
- innovative technological and digital tools/methods for marine and coastal socio-ecosystem health assessment and for effective implementation of management and conservation planning strategies; that include new and innovative, e.g. monitoring and observation systems and platforms, digital technologies, artificial intelligence and machine learning, modelling, climate governance
- a better understanding of the functioning, dynamics and resilience of marine and coastal socio-ecosystems to multi-scale stressors, including (local)human activities/pressures and extreme weather events attributed to climate change
- investigation, test and implementation of innovative adaptation, mitigation, protection and restoration strategies to support resilience, reverse biodiversity loss and ecosystem-based management for marine and coastal socio-ecosystems increasingly pressured by multiple stressors and climate change.
Who is participating?
The BLUECO TAP Action currently unites R&I projects from France, Sweden, Italy and Greece:
- MEDIATION - A robust and efficient digital twin of the ocean (Romaric Verney, IFREMER, France)
- FUTURE-OBS - Augmented Observatories for coastal socio-ecosystems (Eric Thiébaut, Sorbonne Université, France)
- EfxINNOs - Establishing and Operating an Innovative Marine Technology Transfer Network for Enhancing the Transition to a Sustainable Blue Economy in the Black Sea Basin (Georgios Sylaios, Democritus University of Thrace, Greece)
- PROCOAST - PRObabilistic tool for understanding and managing COASTal flooding (Beatrice Nordlöf, Research Institute of Sweden, Sweden)
- EDIPO - Genetic Diversity and Connectivity of the Posidonia Oceanica along the Calabria Coast (Serena Savoca, University of Messina, Italy)
- TECNA-RPAS "Torre Colimena" - Application of the RPAS Technology Integrated with Photogrammetric Modeling in a GIS Environment for the Monitoring of the Coastal Dune Habitat with Juniperus SPP (Luciana Muscogiuri, National Biodiversity Future Center, Italy)
TAP Implementation Phases
The TAP action is structured into five implementation phases, as illustrated in the figure below:
News and Updates
The kick-off meeting of the BLUECO TAP took place on February 10th 2026, during the SBEP Week, in Bucharest (Romania) and online, back-to-back with the Partnership’s second Symposium, “Full Sail Ahead towards a Sustainable Blue Economy”. It brought together representatives of projects to launch the initiative and initiate discussions on its implementation.
The meeting provided an opportunity to introduce the objectives and scope of the TAP, and identify first areas of collaboration. The event also benefited from the experience of coordinators of previous TAP initiatives, who shared lessons learnt and best practices. The next steps will focus on the drafting of the TAP implementation plan.