The Societal Challenges addressed by European Union (EU) strategies such as the Green Deal and Farm-to-Fork require innovative solutions in agriculture, forestry and rural areas. The Multi-Actor-Approach (MAA) is a promising instrument to speed up innovation. However, the H2020 RIA LIAISON (2018-2022) has identified some deficits and inconsistencies in the interpretation of the MAA by both current and potential MA consortia and Member States’ (MS) authorities. PREMIERE will therefore foster the development of sound, coherent and well-prepared MA projects in two ways. Firstly, it will contribute to the building of project consortia that make best use of the complementary knowledge of their members during proposal writing, project activities and beyond, in particular by improving the connection between Horizon Europe (HE) MA projects and Operational Groups (OG). Secondly, through insights and tools, it will support the implementation of innovative governance and sound decision making in policy and administration for the green transition. By using the results from LIAISON and capturing ‘grass roots’ ideas from project participants, policy makers and executive agencies through stakeholder dialogue across all 27 EU MS (including with the SCAR AKIS SWG, National Contact Points and other relevant HE projects), PREMIERE will develop tools as well as training and networking events for capacity development. These will include a Serious Game, an Online Academy and a MOOC. The project will test out the effect of providing seed funding to at least eight MA organisations (mainly OGs) and prepare a handbook of good practices. This user-focused workplan, with its open science outputs, will lead to more effective EU and national AKIS. It will be implemented by a very experienced, competent and genuinely MA consortium of policy makers, executive agencies, advisors for co-innovation partnerships, AKIS actors and/or and current and potential MA project partners.

The overall aim of PREMIERE is to provide tailored options for current and potential MA project partners on how to improve the drafting of MA project proposals with a view to (a) ensuring the balanced involvement of relevant actors with complementary knowledge and (b) enabling these actors to work in a more co-creative way. The project will also work with EU and national/regional level policy makers and executive agencies (including support services such as National Contact Points) to strengthen the ‘enabling environment’ for the MAA and coinnovation.

Based on the MAA and a deep understanding of the AKIS, PREMIERE will apply five major strategies to maximise its impact on improving preparation of MA projects and enabling relevant actors to work in a cocreative way:

• Macro-regional Stakeholder Panels will better link members of the AKIS ‘family’ (WP1 ‘Connect’);
• Focus Groups with policy makers and executive agencies (WP2 ‘Governance’) will identify ways to strengthen the enabling environment for co-innovation;
• Granting Parties with freshly granted MA HE consortia and video diaries will yield insights into hurdles in preparation, inclusion OGs into MA HE projects and better uptake of project results (WP3 ‘Projects’);
• Pathways to overcome these hurdles in proposal preparation or to optimally benefit from good practices will be taken up in innovative tools such as the PREMIERE ‘Serious Game’ (WP4 ‘Tools’);
• An intense capacity development9 programme will deliver practical and proven knowledge and knowhow on co-innovation, capacities and techniques for MA project partners and trainers (WP5 ‘Skills’).

• Dialogue ‘all along the project’ with MA groups of actors, including (but not only) the four PREMIERE Macro-regional Stakeholder Panels (two online meetings per year), the HE MA project ‘family’, the SCAR-AKIS SWG, [Common Agricultural Policy] CAP Networks and National Contact Points (NCPs), will allow the consortium to ‘co-create’ with these actors a common understanding of the MA concept and of the need to improve its implementation.
• PREMIERE will develop with relevant governance actors a shared, but versatile (incorporating, for example, macro-regional specificities), understanding of current weaknesses in the governance framework and actor capacities connected with the enabling environment for MA projects. It will co-define relevant solutions and suitable methodologies for their implementation, including more effective evaluation of the project proposals and mechanisms for supporting consortium building.
• PREMIERE will identify effective and efficient ways to improve the preparation of MA projects, for example by optimising consortium formation, management and coordination strategies, and approaches to co-innovation within the consortium. Specific needs and knowledge gaps will be identified and addressed, and (inter alia) three co-design workshops with MA project actors will provide in-depth insights for the compilation of good practice recommend-ations for MA project proposal development.
• Building on the co-created, user-focused approaches to defining current weaknesses in the enabling environment (WP2) and, especially, the preparation of (in particular, EIP-AGRI) MA projects (WP3), PREMIERE will identify and collate relevant existing (online and other) tools and develop innovative new tools (in particular, a Serious Game). These will be either exploited directly by AKIS actors, with support from PREMIERE, and/or included in various online and face-to-face learning programmes.
• Apart from offering Open Access to the results from WPs 2 and 3 and to the WP4 tools identified and/or developed by PREMIERE via the HE EU-FarmBook platform and the PREMIERE partners’ websites, the project’s outputs will be incorporated into several learning programmes. Appropriate capacity development methodologies, tailored to the needs of specific user groups, will be co-identified. Actors from all 27 EU MS will take part in face-to-face and/or online learning events initiated by the project.

• The drafting of MA project proposals and in particular the involvement of relevant actors with complementary knowledge in a balanced way in the preparatory stage is improved.
• PREMIERE has contributed to the policy objectives linked to Cluster 6, as well as the European Green Deal, the F2F Strategy and the CAP, the Biodiversity Strategy and the wider bioeconomy research and policies.
• PREMIERE has contributed to the CAP cross-cutting objective of modernising the sector by fostering and sharing knowledge, innovation and digitalisation in agriculture and rural areas, and encouraging their uptake.
• Actors, policies, projects and instruments have been connected to (a) encourage the wider use of available knowledge and innovation, and (b) stimulate transposition of innovative solutions into practice and communicate to scientists the research needs of practice.