The Mission Lighthouses come as a response to a number of obstacles and challenges in major European sea and river basins. To tackle these challenges, four basins have been selected based on key criteria: territorial coverage involving all Member States; representation of the main elements of the water system; collaboration with naturally coherent and continuous ecosystems; and alignment with all three Mission objectives. These selections also build on prior political commitments for basin-scale cooperation and existing capacities and networks.  

Each basin aims to address at least one of the Mission Ocean and Waters’ objectives, pursued through the implementation of Lighthouses. 

The Lighthouses are hubs and platforms that support the development and deployment of transformative, innovative solutions across various domains – technological, social, business, and governance. They ensure fast progress towards the achievement of Mission objectives, while having significant impact on society in the river and sea basins through science and technology. 

Each lighthouse pilots the development, demonstration, and deployment of Mission activities across EU sea and river basins. They integrate both existing knowledge outputs and new knowledge, co-designed and co-implemented with citizens and stakeholders, ensuring local business participation and citizen engagement and outreach. The lighthouses will thus provide access to the solutions, services and advice developed not only in their basin, but also to all interested actors from other basins and areas, so that the developed solutions can eventually be scaled up and replicated across the Union.

For the first phase of the Mission, each Lighthouse will focus on a specific objective, which will later be applied across all the basins. Through a Horizon Europe call, four Coordination and Support Action’s (CSAs) have been selected to start the implementation of each Lighthouse. Lear more about them here.

You can also find further information about major regional initiatives at basin level here. 

Several baseline studies were commissioned in 2021 to determine the situation and needs of the region and scale up project focus and activities. These baselines proposed a first set of indicators to monitor in the future the progress of the implementation of the Mission objectives in the four Mission Lighthouse areas. They also collected information about existing governance structures and ongoing citizen engagement initiatives, and assessed the state of alignment of Smart Specialisation Strategies with Mission objectives.