In the early 1990s, a series of initiatives were set about fighting organised crime on a European level. However, the killing of “ndrangheta” members in the German city of Duisburg in 2007 acted as a wake-up call.

Crowdfunding is considered by some experts to have the same effect on banks as Uber has on taxis. Green energy crowdfunding is no exception: the process is 100% digital and lets everybody become an investor or request funding for a sustainable project, without going throughthe banks.

For David Bollier, cities are at a crossroads. As smart city initiatives and data collection increases, it’s essential that citizens use the ideas of the commons to retain control of the services that matter to them, and to ensure these work for the people of the city, not just for business or bureaucracy, he argues.

Sharing emotions is a central part of human communication. Moreover, the internet is becoming an important medium to share them. And this has given rise to collective emotions in online groups.

Robots are usually thought off as devices to alleviate the burden of certain repetitive or difficult tasks. Robots welding car bodies and painting them are a classic example.

Are allergies and so-called autoimmune diseases, like type 1 diabetes, likely to be caused by a lack of exposure to relatively benign pathogens in early childhood? This theory is referred to as the hygiene hypothesis.

A technology relying on holography, that involves measuring mechanical deformations, as signature of artworks has previously been developed to address the protection of cultural heritage.

Storm water is a critical consideration in managing urban water , as it influences the risks of flooding. Unfortunately, a global rise in urban population means that water management in urban areas is now under strain.

The German village of Cappel is home to one of the greatest historical music instruments. The ornate baroque organ here is the work of Arp Schnitger, the grand master of German organ construction who built it in around 1680 for Hamburg.

How can policymakers change the way people think? This is what the InContext project, funded by the EU, hopes to answer. Leading European research institutions in the fields of transition, behaviour and sustainable development are trying to create a manual for change.

Landslides and floods are increasingly occurring natural events . They continue to damage infrastructures and farmland across the EU. Meanwhile, they are also putting people’s life at risk.

But by the time it began in May 2009, the original extreme urgency of the HighNoon project had ‘melted’ so to speak.

Bill Wei is a senior conservation scientist at the Netherlands Institute for Cultural Heritage, in Amsterdam.

MyFashion.eu has found a solution to the delocalization of the clothing industry. The tool, developed in Europe, is called CustoMax and is a system for simplifying the mass production of made-to-measure suits.

After working all of his life as a sound technician for the Bulgarian state television, Emil is now retired. He lives in a 120 square meter house in Gorni Lozen, a village not far from Sofia, but only uses its ground floor and basement because he can’t afford to heat the whole of it.

Ana, 32, loves going to the movies, is keen on theatre and takes regular yoga lessons. However, during the Covid pandemic she quit the frenzy of Madrid to settle in a remote village in Extremadura , a large Spanish rural area, bordering Portugal.

María Regidor co-owns a mini-hydro power plant in Spain, which produces part of the electricity provided to the residents of the Castile and León region.

Peer-to-peer (P2P) platforms allow energy sharing and trading within a community without the binding mediation of the traditional big utilities.

Over the last 50 years photons, the particles that make up light, have replaced electrons to transfer data in communication networks.

Overtourism affects many world's beautiful cities, which often find themselves unprepared to deal with massive flows of visitors encouraged by low prices and easy mobility.