SPQR CLUSTER
Secure Post Quantum Era
A Collaborative European Effort for the Post-Quantum Era
The SPQR cluster brings together innovative European projects that share the same goal: ensuring a secure, coordinated, and effective transition to post-quantum cryptography across the European Union. By fostering collaboration among complementary research and innovation projects, the PQ-REACT, QUBIP, PQ-NEXT, Q-FENCE, QARC, FOCAL, FORTRESS and POSEIDON EU projects are forming the SPQR Cluster, aiming to strengthen knowledge exchange, avoid fragmentation, and amplify impact. Together, these projects address technological, operational, and strategic challenges to support Europe’s long-term cybersecurity resilience against quantum threats.
A Collaborative European Effort for the Post-Quantum Era
The SPQR cluster brings together innovative European projects that share the same goal: ensuring a secure, coordinated, and effective transition to post-quantum cryptography across the European Union. By fostering collaboration among complementary research and innovation projects, the PQ-REACT, QUBIP, PQ-NEXT, Q-FENCE and POSEIDON EU projects are forming the SPQR Cluster, aiming to strengthen knowledge exchange, avoid fragmentation, and amplify impact. Together, these projects address technological, operational, and strategic challenges to support Europe’s long-term cybersecurity resilience against quantum threats.
PQ-REACT
Post Quantum Cryptography Framework for Energy Aware Contexts
PQ-REACT aims to design, develop and validate a framework for a faster and smoother transition from classical to post-quantum cryptography. Utilizing Europe’s most potent quantum infrastructure (the IBM Quantum Computer from Fraunhofer FOKUS), the PQ-REACT primary objective is to design, develop, and validate a framework for a faster and simpler transition from classical to post-quantum cryptography for a broad spectrum of contexts and usage domains. This framework will incorporate PQC migration routes, cryptographic agility techniques, and a toolkit for validating post-quantum cryptographic systems. Users can switch to post-quantum cryptography through this framework, considering their unique circumstances, different contexts, and a wide range of real-world pilots, such as Smart Grids, 5G, and ledgers. Further, the project will also foster a series of open calls for SMEs and other stakeholders to bring and test their PQC algorithms and external pilots on the PQ-REACT, Quantum Computing Infrastructure.
QUBIP
Quantum-oriented Update to Browsers and Infrastructure for the PQ Transition
The development of Quantum Computers (QC) is opening up exciting new frontiers, but it comes at the cost of breaking the foundations of current digital security. The research community is working to define Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) to counter this threat. However, the transition to PQC is delicate and time-consuming because it affects many functions, algorithms, and protocols in an a priori unknown cascade of dependencies. QUBIP is designed to contribute to the EU transition to PQC with the aim of streamlining the process and creating a replicable transition model (and also to counter Post-Quantum threat as soon as possible). QUBIP focuses on digital systems addressing the 5 main building blocks that use public-key cryptography for security purposes: hardware, cryptographic libraries, operating system, communication protocols and applications. QUBIP addresses all 5 blocks coherently solving all dependency issues that may arise within each block and between blocks with the ultimate goal of validating at TRL 6 three systems that use these blocks in IoT-based Digital Manufacturing, Internet Browsing, and Software Networks Environments for Telcos use cases.The return on experience from the three practical exercises of transition to PQC will then be maximised through the development of a migration playbook. This will include the lessons learnt and an evaluation of any technical, economic, and regulatory barriers encountered, together with the solutions to overcome them, in order to enable the definition of a replicable process to provide structured support and practical guidance to industry stakeholders. The technical activities will be underpinned by three supporting activities (i) evaluation of the capabilities of QCs to assess their implication to primitives, algorithms and protocols adopted, and contribution to (ii) standardization efforts addressing transition to PQC processes and (iii) policy measures addressing technology changes coming from the advent of QC and PQC.
POSEIDON
Preparaing Europe for the cybersecurity challenges posed by quantum computing
POSEIDON is an EU-funded project that prepares Europe for the cybersecurity challenges posed by quantum computing. As quantum technologies advance, the cryptographic methods protecting today’s digital systems will no longer be sufficient, and they will likely be able to break commonly used encryption, putting digital identities, online communications, and critical services across Europe at growing risk.This creates an urgent need for new, quantum-safe security foundations based on post-quantum cryptography (PQC) and hybrid cryptographic approaches. To address these threats, POSEIDON aims to enable a secure and reliable transition to post-quantum cryptography for digital identity and data protection. The project focuses on developing scalable, crypto-agile cryptographic solutions that can be realistically deployed in existing public and private systems to protect sensitive data and identities, both at rest and in transit.
Q-FENCE
Securing tomorrow’s digital infrastructure with quantum-resistant cryptography
Q-FENCE is a transformative initiative aimed at securing tomorrow’s digital infrastructure with quantum-resistant cryptography. In response to the rising threats posed by quantum computing, Q-FENCE develops a robust hybrid framework integrating classical, quantum, and post-quantum cryptographic techniques. Utilizing innovative approaches such as Ring-LWE, Module-LWE, Quantum Random Number Generators, and hardware-accelerated primitives, the project establishes a dual-layer security model that fortifies data protection across diverse infrastructures. Leveraging hardware-accelerated primitives and energy-efficient protocols, Q-FENCE ensures quantum resilience while addressing critical challenges such as seamless integration with legacy systems, regulatory compliance, and scalable deployment.
QARC
Accelerating the transition to PQC
Quantum computers threaten to break today’s cryptography but Europe is preparing to address this challenge. One solution is post-quantum cryptography (PQC). The EU-funded QARC project is accelerating the transition to PQC by developing secure, practical implementations for real-world systems. From embedded devices to cloud infrastructures, it focuses on hybrid schemes, cryptographic agility, and resistance to side-channel attacks. Partnering with national cyber security authorities, the project runs pilots in e-government and open-source platforms to test deployment strategies across the EU. QARC also supports policy development, standardisation, and coordinated roadmaps, with special attention to helping smaller countries manage the transition. QARC is laying the groundwork for a secure digital future in the post-quantum era.
FOCAL
Functional cOmposition of post-quantum Cryptosystems At Large
FOCAL (Functional cOmposition of post-quantum Cryptosystems At Large) is a three-year Horizon Europe Research & Innovation project coordinated by the KIOS Research and Innovation Center of Excellence (University of Cyprus), aiming to accelerate Europe’s transition to quantum-safe communication networks and critical infrastructures. The project will develop an integrated, cross-layer framework for the end-to-end functional composition and deployment of post-quantum cryptography (PQC) in edge and large-scale networked ecosystems, complemented by metrics and methodologies to assess PQC readiness and contributions to EU standardisation and policy recommendations for a coordinated PQC migration.
