PARC is an EU-wide research and innovation partnership programme to support EU and national chemical risk assessment and risk management bodies with new data, knowledge, methods, networks and skills to address current, emerging and novel chemical safety challenges. PARC will facilitate the transition to next generation risk assessment to better protect human health and the environment, in line with the Green Deal's zeropollution ambition for a toxic free environment and will be an enabler for the future EU Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability. It builds in part on the work undertaken and experience acquired in past and on-going research and innovation actions, but goes beyond by its vocation to establish
an EU-wide risk assessment hub of excellence. To contribute to several expected impacts of destination 2 "Living and working in a healthpromoting environment", PARC will organise the activities to reach three specific objectives:
- An EU-wide sustainable cross-disciplinary network to identify and agree on research and innovation needs and to support research uptake into regulatory chemical risk assessment.
- Joint EU research and innovation activities responding to identified priorities in support of current regulatory risk assessment processes for chemical substances and to emerging challenges.
- Strengthening existing capacities and building new transdisciplinary platforms to support chemical risk assessment.
The Partnership brings together Ministries and national public health and risk assessment agencies, as well as research organisations and academia from almost all of EU Member States. Representatives of Directorates-General of the EC and EU agencies involved in the monitoring of chemicals and the assessment of risks are also participating. PARC will meet the needs of risk assessment agencies to better anticipate emerging risks and respond to the challenges and priorities of the new European policies.

Ghent University will take several roles within this consortium. Prof. De Saeger and Prof. De Boevre are involved in analytical development of novel tools for monitoring of mycotoxin exposure biomarkers as well as performing human biomonitoring. Prof. Asselman is involved in the task forces focusing on (development of novel integrated approaches to testing and ) assessment (IATAs) for human and environmental risk assessment and (2) the development of novel adverse outcome pathways and the link with quantitative systems toxicology.