ECORYS BRUSSELS NV

Their core work

ECORYS Brussels is the EU policy research and consulting arm of the ECORYS Group, operating from Brussels to serve European institutions and policy processes. In H2020, they focused specifically on rural and agricultural governance — designing and evaluating contract mechanisms that pay farmers for delivering environmental and climate benefits, and facilitating multi-actor dialogues to improve rural policy. Their work sits at the intersection of policy analysis, participatory methods, and field evidence: they help translate research findings into actionable policy recommendations. They contribute both as analysts who structure evidence and as process architects who bring diverse rural actors to the table.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

Both H2020 projects started in 2019, so a traditional timeline shift is limited — but the thematic contrast between the two projects reveals a clear internal progression in scope. CONSOLE positioned ECORYS as a technical analyst of agri-environmental instruments: contracts, payment mechanisms, land tenure, collective farmer actions. SHERPA, which ECORYS coordinated and ran four years, moved the lens upward to the policy process itself: how rural actors participate in shaping policy, how citizen voices are integrated, and how evidence gets built into governance systems. The trajectory points from instrument-level analysis toward systemic policy architecture and multi-actor facilitation.

ECORYS Brussels is moving toward leading participatory policy processes rather than supporting technical instrument design — making them increasingly relevant as coordinators of multi-stakeholder policy platforms, not just evaluators.

How they like to work

ECORYS splits evenly between coordination and participation across their two projects, and took coordinator role on the larger, longer project (SHERPA). They operate in large, geographically diverse consortia — 39 unique partners across 20 countries from just 2 projects is a very high ratio, suggesting they are comfortable orchestrating complex multi-actor processes. This profile is typical of a policy consulting firm that serves as a hub: bringing together research institutes, public authorities, and field practitioners under one roof.

With 39 unique consortium partners across 20 countries from only 2 projects, ECORYS Brussels has an unusually broad and dense network relative to their project volume. Their reach is clearly European-wide, consistent with their Brussels positioning as an EU policy consultancy.

What sets them apart

ECORYS Brussels occupies a rare position as a private consulting firm that coordinates large EU research consortia in agricultural and rural policy — a space usually dominated by universities and research institutes. Their value to a consortium is not lab capacity or datasets, but structured policy analysis, multi-actor facilitation experience, and direct proximity to EU institutions in Brussels. For a project that needs someone to translate research into policy-actionable outputs and manage a diverse international partnership, ECORYS brings credibility and process discipline that academic partners often lack.

Highlights from their portfolio

• SHERPA
  Coordinated by ECORYS and running four years (2019–2023), this is their flagship project: a participatory hub connecting rural actors across Europe to shape evidence-based rural policy, with the highest EC funding (EUR 516,500) in their portfolio.
• CONSOLE
  Demonstrates ECORYS's technical depth in agri-environmental contract design, covering result-based payments, collective farmer actions, and land tenure — foundational instruments in EU Common Agricultural Policy reform.