October 13, 2026

Making Europe’s Research Infrastructures Easier to Find and Access – What It Means for Underground Laboratories

Europe has an extensive network of advanced research facilities, test environments, laboratories and technology infrastructures. Yet access can still be difficult for companies — particularly SMEs — if they do not know which facilities exist, what services they offer or how to access them.

The European Commission is now addressing this challenge more directly.

In September 2025, the Commission adopted the European Strategy on Research and Technology Infrastructures, aiming to strengthen Europe’s infrastructure ecosystem and make it more accessible and better connected to the needs of researchers, innovators and industry. Research and technology infrastructures are seen as supporting the entire innovation cycle, from fundamental research to technology validation and deployment.

A further step came in July 2026, when the Commission adopted the Charter of Access for Industrial Users to Research and Technology Infrastructures. The Charter proposes six principles for improving industrial access: better visibility and simpler access to services, transparency and quality, clear contractual arrangements, safe management of intellectual property, tailored support for companies, and increased cooperation and access to data.

This development is highly relevant to underground research facilities.

Underground laboratories can provide environments that are difficult or impossible to reproduce in conventional laboratories: full-scale underground spaces, controlled or realistic geological conditions, possibilities for long-term monitoring, and environments for testing technologies related to mining, tunnelling, sensing, robotics, safety, energy, environmental monitoring and other applications.

For the European Underground Laboratories Association (EUL), increasing the findability of these capabilities is therefore an important objective. A company searching for an underground testing environment should be able to understand what facilities are available, what can be tested, under which conditions, and whom to contact.

This is also one of the directions of the renewed EUL website. Through stronger member profiles, laboratory spotlights and the developing EUL Database, we aim to make the capabilities and expertise available within the European underground laboratory community easier to discover.

Connecting unique research environments with companies that can use them is an important step towards turning European research infrastructure capacity into innovation, new technologies and practical applications.