PARC recently concluded its second year of partnership and prepare for its third year with a series of meetings from 13 to 16 of May 2024, surrounded by the Austrian Alps at UMIT Tirol. The PARC Consortium meeting 2024 brought together more than 170 participants on-site and 180 online from all PARC consortium countries and beyond. The event, scheduled every two years, allowed some participants to reconnect in person for the first time since the PARC Kick-off meeting in Paris in 2022.

The series of meetings began with the Management Board meeting on 13 May, followed by the PARC General Assembly on 14 and 15 May. Several keynote speakers from UMIT Tirol ↗, PARC Coordination Team, Directorate-General for Research and Innovation ↗ (DG RTD), European Health and Digital Executive Agency ↗ (HaDEA), Governing Board and the Austrian Minister of Climate Action and Energy opened the assembly. The General Assembly provided the work packages in PARC a platform to share their progress and to promote better coordination between them. More than 20 speakers from different work packages collaborated to highlight their progress in six different themes:

1. PARC data and tools to perform risk assessment of mixtures
2. Regulatory applications of new approach methodologies (NAMs)
3. Human and environmental monitoring in support of chemicals risk assessment
4. Environmental risk assessment
5. Use of modelling in chemical risk assessment
6. Identifying and predicting hazard and risk for early warning systems (EWS) and Safe and Sustainable by Design (SSbD): models and tools

In addition to building internal synergy, PARC also aims to develop synergy with external research programmes and partnerships, starting at the European level. To facilitate this, the External Synergy Workshop focused on promoting PARC’s growing SYNnet and allowing guest speakers from different European initiatives to share their potential synergies with PARC. Guest speakers represented the following initiatives:

• Biodiversa+ ↗ (European Biodiversity Partnership),
• the ASPIS cluster ↗ (Animal-free Safety assessment of chemicals: Project cluster for Implementation of novel Strategies)
• the NORMAN Network ↗ (Network of reference laboratories, research centres and related organisations for monitoring of emerging environmental substances),
• the EURION Cluster ↗ (European Cluster to Improve Identification of Endocrine Disruptors) which included  projects such as: ATHENA ↗ (Assays for the identification of Thyroid Hormone axis - disrupting chemicals: Elaborating Novel Assessment strategies), ERGO ↗ (Endocrine Guideline Optimisation) and GOLIATH ↗ (Generation of Novel, Integrated and Internationally Harmonised Approaches for Testing Metabolism Disrupting Chemicals),
• and EPAA ↗ (European Partnership for Alternative Approaches to Animal Testing).

A presentation of the “Science to Policy” approach by the Joint Research Centre (JRC) highlighted the challenges of communication between the scientific and political worlds. PARC also featured an early-stage-researcher from the PARC Junior Community, who presented his work to the whole consortium. Additionally, there were a poster session and an  exhibition “Healthy horizons: Our journey to create a safer chemical world” to complement the conference program.

The General Assembly was followed by meetings of the National Hub Contact Points, the International Board, the Stakeholder Forum, the Data and Ethics Protection Board (DEPB), and the Governing Board Meetings from 15 to 16 May. These meetings provided an opportunity to discuss the progress and impact of PARC results and plan future activities at different PARC governance level.

Thank you to committee members for the efforts put into the preparation of this year’s consortium meeting and to the participants for bringing their enthusiasms to each session. We also would like to especially thank the UMIT Tirol team for their wonderful work in hosting us at their university. Please stay tuned for more material from this marathon of meetings and see you at the next PARC Consortium Meeting 2026!