The ONE-BLUE project consortium presents the progress made in the first 12 months in Athens and coordinated the next steps for 2025

The ONE-BLUE project consortium presents the progress made in the first 12 months in Athens and coordinated the next steps for 2025

  • All ONE-BLUE partners gathered in Athens for the Annual Meeting to assess the project’s first year and set goals for the second year.
  • ONE-BLUE organised also an Open Cross Sectorial Technical meeting to spread our activities around local stakeholders

The partners of the European ONE-BLUE project held their second face-to-face meeting on 28-29 January at the University of Agriculture of Athens, Greece. The meeting aimed to present the progress achieved during the project first year and outline the next steps of this project, which focuses on an integrated approach to assessing the levels and impact of contaminants of emerging concern on BLUE health and biodiversity, modulated by climate change drivers. The event also featured a Cross-Sectoral Technical Meeting with various local stakeholders.

Hosted by the partners Hellenic Centre for Marine Research (HCMR) and Venthic, the meeting began on Tuesday, January 28, with a presentation  of ONE-BLUE status. Each partner leading a work package presented the key conclusions from the first year and discussed the activities planned for the year ahead. CNR-IRSA presented the future sampling campaigns to be carried out, HCMR explained the evolution of the mesocosm studies and TU Delft, together with the leaders of work package 3 tasks, reported on the new tools and protocols to support the monitoring of emerging pollutants in the ocean. Venthic presented the data collection activities, Finnova talked about the communication and dissemination actions of the project and finally, IDAEA-CSIC gave the partners a presentation focused on project management.

Cross-sectorial meeting 

On Wednesday, January 29, a cross-sectoral technical took place, bringing together various local stakeholders, including public bodies, Greek research Centers, and representatives from European projects active in Greece.

Some local actors presented their work, in this sense, Triantafyllos Kaloudis, researcher at EYDAP‘s, the largest company in Greece in the water supply, sewerage and wastewater treatment sector, presented his approach to non-targeted analysis of environmental samples, linking it to the need to develop quality assurance practices leading to laboratory accreditation for such non-targeted analyses.For his part, Ioannis Sitaras, Director of the Hellenic Accreditation System, presented the latest developments on the accreditation of measurements in the environmental area, focusing on areas such as food, water and environment while acknowledging the current challenges in these fields and the standardization.

Later, Steven Brooks, project coordinator of ONE-BLUE sister project CONTRAST, explained the novelties in their project. introduced the latest developments within their initiative. Additionally, several ONE-BLUE work packages (WPs) were presented to stakeholders, providing an overview of the project’s progress during its first year.

Afterwards, the attendees had the opportunity to exchange experiences and opinions with the project partners through four round tables in which different aspects of the project were analysed. The day concluded with a tour in HCMR’s facilities where participants had the opportunity to visit the laboratories of the project’s partner.