In Belgium, the EU-funded PROMICON project has released its first policy brief supporting the 2018 EU Bioeconomy Strategy’s goal to create a sustainable, circular and low-emissions economy. The brief outlines four policy recommendations that harness the potential of microbiome analysis and synthetic microbial consortia technologies to accelerate the deployment of a sustainable European bioeconomy. In nature, different microorganisms can act together in a community, combining useful microbial capabilities to survive and thrive in diverse conditions. It is these microbial consortia that PROMICON has been studying and learning from in order to develop its own productive consortia that can be used to produce energy and chemicals sustainably.
PROMICON has also created a Policy Corner that serves as a hub where stakeholders can access the project’s policy brief, share their ideas for policies, ask questions and offer feedback that can help shape the project’s future policy recommendations. The policy brief can also be accessed through PROMICON’s open-access collection in the ‘Research Ideas and Outcomes’ journal and on the Horizon Results Platform. This is part of the project’s strategy to make its research more transparent and accessible.
