Europe is making choices. On the shape of FP10. On how the Clean Industrial Deal translates into investment priorities. On what resilience means for energy systems increasingly exposed to geopolitical disruption and the cyclical crises that fossil fuel dependency makes inevitable. These are all open debates, happening now, with consequences that will shape European research and innovation for the next decade.

Good choices require good evidence. And good evidence, in a field as complex as energy research, does not travel from labs to decision-makers on its own. It requires translation: synthesising across technologies, across countries, across levels of maturity. Moreover, it requires independence: A voice that can assess options critically without being tied to a single technology or national interest. And it requires a community large enough to see the full picture.

That is the work behind Research. Connect. Lead. and the reason EERA put forward three policy reports, each addressing a structural challenge where research and innovation can directly strengthen Europe's competitiveness.

The first, on Innovation Hubs, tackles the persistent gap between Europe's strong research base and its capacity to turn that research into industrial impact. The model proposes a pan-European framework to coordinate technology transfer and de-risk investment. The second, on Resilience and Preparedness, examines how low-carbon energy R&I can make European energy systems more robust against the disruptions it already faces and those it must anticipate. The third, on AI in Energy Systems, addresses the gap between AI's potential to accelerate progress across the energy value chain and the barriers that keep most initiatives fragmented. It is a subject I contributed to directly, and one where the need for a coordinated approach remains acute.

This is not where the work stops. The Innovation Hubs model is being explored further within EERA with a view to developing an approach that different technology areas can adapt. On resilience and preparedness, work is underway to embed the topic more structurally within EERA's research architecture. These reports were a starting point; what follows is how they become operational.

In the coming weeks, we will look more closely at each report and what it reveals about Europe's path forward. We have brought together the full campaign — the reports, factsheets and related materials — on our Research. Connect. Lead. campaign page, and we invite you to explore it and share it with colleagues, partners and anyone engaged in these policy conversations. If you work in any of these areas, let us know how it connects to your work; while if you belong to the EERA community, we encourage you to consider anchoring your own future interventions on the proposed messages and reference the evidence in the forums where it matters. Research that isn't communicated doesn't shape decisions. Together, we can make sure ours does.