Europe wants to bring cooperative, connected and automated mobility to market

Europe wants to bring cooperative, connected and automated mobility (CCAM) closer to the market. That is the thinking behind three of the topics included in Horizon Europe’s HORIZON-CL5-2026-10 call, which is due to open on 4th June and has a proposal deadline of 8th October 2026. These topics sit within the 2026-2027 work programme and aim to narrow the gap between Europe’s strength in research and innovation in this field and its more limited ability to turn that expertise into commercial deployment compared with other regions.

The push for CCAM also needs to be seen in the broader context of the EU’s 2050 climate neutrality goals. Road transport accounts for 25% of the EU’s total greenhouse gas emissions, and experts say cutting that impact will require a combination of technologies, including the electrification of mobility and connected and automated vehicles.

This need has been recognised by the European Commission and the road transport partnerships — EGVIAfor2Zero, the CCAM Association and the Batteries Europe Partnership Association — in a Memorandum of Understanding aimed at making the EU a leader in sustainable and smart mobility by 2035. The CCAM Association’s strategic research and innovation agenda also underlines the importance of smooth automation in road transport as a way to move towards climate neutrality, reduce energy consumption and, at the same time, maintain or improve safety and overall traffic conditions.

The challenge, however, remains turning that research strength into market uptake. “Europe is already at the forefront of innovation in CCAM technology, with a strong academic base and significant patenting activity, but it still lags behind competing regions, especially China and the United States, in deployment and commercialisation,” explains Gorka Arzallus, operational coordinator in European projects and transport expert at Zabala Innovation.

Europe’s response lies in large-scale validation

That was one of the central messages to emerge from the Road Transport Research Conference 2026, held in Brussels in February. The event brought together the CCAM, 2Zero and Batt4EU communities and served as a platform to share common concerns and put possible responses to this challenge on the table. As highlighted during the event, “cost, geopolitical uncertainty and the EU’s difficulties in generating measurable value from research results appear to be the main obstacles along this path,” Arzallus summarises.

One of the possible solutions raised at the conference was the deployment of a cross-border test bed for the integration of CCAM technologies into large fleets of heavy-duty vehicles, such as buses and lorries, in cooperation with eight Member States. This would be complemented by regulatory harmonisation between EU countries through regulatory sandboxes.

The proposal points to a short-term response aimed at accelerating Europe’s competitive positioning in the smart mobility market. At the same time, the CCAM Partnership has promoted initiatives to improve the valorisation of research results, such as CCAMbassador, which is designed to facilitate knowledge exchange between research and industry and speed up the uptake of results.

The event also provided an opportunity to gauge the technological state of the ecosystem. During the conference, EU-funded projects were presented in areas such as safety assurance (Sunrise, Synergies, I4Driving), the integration of services into traffic management and fleet operations (In2CCAM, Conductor), and the implementation of trustworthy artificial intelligence in CCAM solutions (AIthena, AI4CCAM).

Three topics closing in October

The European Commission and the CCAM community have carried that diagnosis into Horizon Europe’s new 2026–2027 work programme. Within that framework, the main focus of the 2026 calls will be the CCAM flagship project (HORIZON-CL5-2026-10-D6-01), aimed at large-scale demonstrations.

“Used to CCAM projects worth between €15 million and €20 million, the sector is now facing an exceptional step change in scale: a topic with €100 million allocated to a single proposal, an unprecedented strategic opportunity,” says Arzallus.

The aim is to launch a large-scale pilot under real-world conditions to demonstrate CCAM solutions at technology readiness levels (TRLs) 7–8. The use cases are divided into three main pillars. The first is individual mobility in urban, suburban, motorway and rural environments, with mixed traffic and road conditions, variable infrastructure and differing user needs.

The second is shared mobility and public transport, with improved safety, fairness, accessibility and sustainability as the main objectives, alongside support for operators through sustainable business models. The third is freight transport and logistics, with validation of end-to-end use cases and maximum compatibility with multimodal mobility applications.

“Given its scale, the near-to-market demonstration logic of this call could serve as a reference point for research and innovation strategies under the future framework programme (FP10) and beyond,” Arzallus warns.

The consortium will be just as decisive as the technology

In an initiative of this kind, technology will not be the only distinguishing factor. “The make-up of the consortium appears to be a determining factor in the success of the proposal,” the expert says. The project must represent all stakeholders involved in CCAM technologies, from private technology developers to public bodies, operators, municipalities and research institutions; from major Tier 1 suppliers and OEMs to SMEs and start-ups; and from social sciences and humanities experts to user groups.

That scale and complexity lead to a practical recommendation for organisations interested in this call. “Rather than trying to build a proposal of this magnitude from scratch, it makes sense to look for proposals that are already under way and take part in pan-European initiatives and upcoming events in the CCAM field, such as ECAVA, EARPA, ERTICO, events organised by the CCAM Partnership, or those run by the CCAMbassador project,” Arzallus suggests. He adds: “Those already involved in these networks may well be building consortia and preparing applications for this topic.”

Two more topics to prepare the next phase

The flagship project is accompanied by two other topics focused on less mature technologies. One of them (HORIZON-CL5-2026-10-D6-02) addresses geopolitical competition and socioeconomic resilience in CCAM, with the aim of assessing the European context against other regions, analysing its socioeconomic impacts, and drawing up public policy recommendations and business strategies to strengthen long-term competitiveness.

The other (HORIZON-CL5-2026-10-D6-03) focuses on generative artificial intelligence applied to CCAM. In this case, the European Commission is prioritising safe, reliable and efficient environmental perception and decision-making through the integration of generative AI into existing CCAM concepts, together with tools and guidelines to help developers integrate it.

“Following the trend of previous calls, these topics will require a multi-actor approach and will incorporate key contributions from social sciences and humanities experts to ensure fairness, inclusion, user perception and user acceptance,” Arzallus concludes.