Successful General Assembly and Joint EU Stakeholder Workshop in Brussels, in December 2025
From 9 to 11 December, the TRANSIENCE consortium came together in Brussels for an engaging three-day programme combining the project’s General Assembly with an EU case study stakeholder workshop, hosted at the premises of our partner CEPS. The joint workshop was organised in two parts.
In the first part, both TRANSIENCE and its sister project AMIGDALA presented their research progress to date, with a particular focus on ongoing modelling and scenario development, to elicit feedback and indications for next steps from a group of high-level policy and industry representatives, including from various European Commission DGs and the A.SPIRE Association. Both presentations, which were well received and prompted interactive discussions among participants, are available below:
TRANSIENCE: An analytical framework and its modules for assessing the European industry’s path to circularity, decarbonisation, sustainability (link)
AMIGDALA: A proof-of-concept for an integrated industrial modelling framework (link)
The second part, exclusively organised by and dedicated to research purposes of the TRANSIENCE project, featured two breakout sessions on Europe’s industrial resilience through material flow analysis, specifically focusing on steel in passenger cars and polymers in plastic packaging. The discussions generated lively engagement and provided the project team with consolidated knowledge on the two sectoral sustainability pathways, briefly summarised below:
Polymers & Plastic Packaging: In modelling as in the real world, the homogeneity of plastic streams, virgin or end-of-life, here in particular for packaging, has a massive impact on the outcome of circularity measures (not only recycling). This calls for differentiating in detail between types of polymers, packaging, and applications, while acknowledging that data availability is a real limiting factor. Such differentiation would allow, in modelling as in the real world, to better account for potential regulatory measures (targeting specific applications), industry initiatives (standardisation, mono-material packaging), and waste treatment options (separated collection and sorting).
Steel & Automotive: In summary, participants highlighted that establishing material efficiency and reuse in the automotive sector is challenged by the intense (global) competition and consumer preferences. Future developments are uncertain and may occur disruptive, e.g. switch to electric or self-driving cars and car sharing. One participant highlighted the lack of a clear vision, which circularity elements are most promising in context of decarbonisation, due to cross-sectoral implications and trade-offs. The role of policies for enabling a circular transition was omnipresent throughout the discussions.
This second round of intensive regional stakeholder engagement aims to validate the enhanced satellite modules of MIC3 in the project's targeted four regional case studies (including Rhine-Ruhr in Germany, Port of Rotterdam in the Netherlands, the Basque Country in Spain, and Silesia in Poland), as well as at the EU level, ensuring that both the MIC3 ecosystem and the individual modules comprising it will be able to respond to real-world questions supporting policy and industry decision-making.
Extensive summaries and insights from the workshop can be found in a corresponding milestone report available here.
Moreover, during the General Assembly, held on the first (December 9) and third (December 11) day of our Brussels trip, TRANSIENCE partners met in person with members of the Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) to discuss project progress and refine next steps. Particular attention was given to the operationalisation of satellite modules to better reflect the needs of diverse regional industrial clusters, including the EU as a whole, as well as to lay the groundwork for modelling integration. In between our General Assembly days and in the morning of the workshop day (December 10), TRANSIENCE and AMIGDALA together had a dry run and coordination meeting in the run up to our workshop, to go through the presentations and outline the procedures during and expectations from the EU case study-related stakeholder engagement.
Overall, the three-day event was highly successful, providing partners with valuable insights and constructive feedback from EU policymakers as well as from industry stakeholders, including representatives from the A.SPIRE and Processes4Planet ecosystem, and the two projects’ Scientific Advisory Boards.
Stay tuned for more information and updates on the upcoming regional stakeholder workshops, to be held in Q1 2026!