Sustainable Procurement in Railway Industry on the Right Track : Romania & Norway in Collaboration (SPRINT)
The project aims to strengthen Green Public Procurement (GPP) practices in the Romanian and Norwegian railway sectors, addressing gaps in sustainable procurement and promoting environmentally friendly solutions. It focuses on innovative procurement strategies, best practices, and sustainable development in the railway sector.
More details can be found here.
PAAR-Net: Participatory Approaches with Older Adults
Babeș-Bolyai Univeristy is a Member of the International PAAR-Net Project. The Faculty of Business of Babeș-Bolyai University is a member of the project’s Management Committee and actively participates in this initiative, contributing to the promotion of participatory research with the elderly.
We are proud to be part of PAAR-Net: Participatory Approaches with Older Adults, an international research network supported by COST Action (CA22167) and coordinated by Jagiellonian University in Kraków.
PAAR-Net is dedicated to rethinking how older adults are involved in research, policymaking, and practice. The project promotes a vision of science that is inclusive, collaborative, and people-centered—science for the people, by the people.
By encouraging participatory approaches with older adults, PAAR-Net aims to make ageing societies more fair, inclusive, and sustainable. Involving older adults directly helps ensure that policies, research, and services reflect their real needs, experiences, and hopes. This leads to more effective outcomes and promotes social justice and equity for older adults across different cultures and countries.
The main goal of PAAR-Net is to close the gap between academic research and real-world policymaking by promoting co-produced knowledge with older adults. The network led by dr hab. Anna Urbaniak from Jagiellonian University in Kraków (Action Chair) and dr Anna Wanka from the University of Vienna (Action Vice Chair) includes over 400 researchers from more than 40 countries, working together to:
* Host international events, including training schools and knowledge exchange meetings;
* Support short-term scientific visits;
* Award grants for independent research and conference participation;
* Produce scientific publications, policy briefs, and materials co-created with older adults.
PAAR-Net’s work is organised into four key focus areas:
1. Health, Care & Support;
2. Community & Place;
3. Technology & Innovation;
4.Synthesis & Quality Standards for Participatory Research.
The initiative also includes a Young Researchers and Innovators Forum and an Older Co-Creators Group, ensuring strong involvement from both emerging scholars and older adults themselves.
Researchers, practitioners, and professionals with relevant expertise are welcome to join PAAR-Net. If your work relates to participatory approaches and any of the project’s focus areas, we encourage you to get involved.
For more details and to learn how to join, visit the official project website: https://paar-net.eu/
Futourwork
Tourism and hospitality (T&H) is a key driver of the European economy, making up over 11.7% of employment. Yet the industry faces deep-rooted challenges that impact workers’ rights, job security and wellbeing – especially for marginalised workers such as women, migrants and young people.
Many T&H workers are in non-standard forms of work, including platform work. Generally considered as self-employed, platform workers risk exploitation, forced labour, mistreatment, and sexual abuse. Furthermore, algorithmic management impacts negatively on these workers. Their precarity is increased due to legal, knowledge and financial obstacles they face in representation and social dialogue structures.
Using an interdisciplinary, gender and intersectional lens, we will address these digital transformations challenging the sector. The project will provide empowering solutions through accessible tools and legal resources for those who need them most:
- Workers to understand their rights;
- Businesses to benchmark and improve worker wellbeing;
- Policymakers to build and strengthen regulations.
FUTOURWORK’s legacy will be enhanced social justice within the tourism and hospitality sector, benefitting workers and businesses alike.
The World we live in. Models and Perspectives of Cross-Border Cooperation in Central-Eastern Europe
In an ever-changing Europe, where challenges such as political tensions and military conflicts test the foundations of peace and stability, it is more important than ever to reflect on the core values that have shaped the European project. As Andrew Linklater describes in The European Civilizing Process, peace, economic development, a commitment to progress, and mutual understanding have long been at the heart of Europe’s collective vision. How do these ideals hold up today, as Europe navigates complex global realities? What remains of the European Dream that Jeremy Rifkin so powerfully described?
More details can be found here.
Horizon Europe Balance
The Faculty of Business contributes to nature restoration and the development of viable agricultural systems through the Horizon Europe BALANCE project, dedicated to the implementation of the Nature Restoration Regulation of the EU
The Faculty of Business, Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, is a partner in the European project BALANCE (Biodiversity and Landscape Restoration through Agricultural Systems for Nature Conservation and Resilient Farm Economies), funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe program. With a funding of almost €6 million, a duration of four years and a consortium bringing together 18 partners from 10 countries, the project was selected in a highly competitive competition with a success rate of only 7%.
BALANCE contributes to the implementation of the European Union’s recent Nature Restoration Regulation, one of the most important current European approaches in the field of the environment. The project stems from a major challenge facing contemporary Europe: how to restore nature without compromising agricultural production and farm viability.
The project will analyze the opportunities and challenges associated with nature restoration at the farm and agricultural landscapes levels, involving farmers, public authorities, civil society organizations, and the scientific community. Six case study regions across Europe will serve as testing grounds for new ideas in policy, incentives, indicators, and monitoring. These regions are located in the Netherlands, Flanders, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, and Denmark. Together, they represent a wide range of farming systems, from intensive to extensive agriculture, and include organic, nature-inclusive, and high-nature-value farming approaches. Through collaboration, knowledge exchange, and joint learning, aims to develop practical insights and pathways to support the implementation of the Nature Restoration Regulation and a transformation towards nature-positive farming systems. Thus, the Faculty of Business at UBB will play an active role in developing and substantiating the solutions, policies, and tools necessary for implementing the EU Regulation on Nature Restoration.
Participation in the BALANCE project gives the Faculty of Business the opportunity to contribute to one of the most important European initiatives dedicated to the restoration of nature and the transition to sustainable agri-food systems.
More information
Contact person: Prof. dr. Dacinia-Crina Petrescu (Project Director for the UBB partner)
Faculty of Business, Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, România
E-mail: crina.petrescu@ubbcluj.ro
Partners
| Participant No. | Short name | Participant organisation name | Type of Organisation | Country |
| 1 (coordinator) | WR | Stichting Wageningen Research | Research institute | The Netherlands |
| 2 | EVINBO | Eigen Vermogen van het Instituut voor Natuur- en Bosonderzoek | Research institute | Belgium |
| 3 | EV ILVO | Eigen Vermogen van het Instituut voor Landbouw- en Visserijonderzoek | Research institute | Belgium |
| 4 | IEEP | Institute for European Environmental Policy – IEEP AISBL | Research institute | Europe |
| 5 | UBB | Universitatea Babes Bolyai | University | Romania |
| 6 | ECO | Ecologic Institut Gemeinnutzige GMBH | Research institute | Germany |
| 7 | AU | Aarhus University | University | Denmark |
| 8 | BIOP | Associacao BIOPOLIS | Research institute | Portugal |
| 9 | ILE | ILE-SAS – Institute of Landscape Ecology of the Slovak Academy of Sciences | Research institute | Slovakia |
| 10 | REV | Associacio REVOLVE Mediterraneo | Communication expert | Spain |
| 11 | IA | Institut National d’Enseignement Superieur pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environment | Research institute/ university | France |
| AE12 | INRAE | Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement | Research institute | France |
| 13 | TAGIS | TAGIS: Centro de Conservacão das borboletas de Portugal | Societal partner | Portugal |
| 14 | VBN | Nederlandse Vereniging tot Bescherming van Vogels | Societal partner | The Netherlands |
| 15 | AEEU | Agroecology Europe | Societal partner | Europe |
| 16 | IU | Stichting IUCN Nederlands Comité | Societal partner | The Netherlands |
| 17 | BN | BoerenNatuur.nl | Societal partner | The Netherlands |
| 18 | COPA | Comite des Organisations Professionnelles Agricole de l’Union Europeenne Copa Association de Fait | Societal partner | Europe |
For more details please click here here.