[europa.eu]
Making Europe more secure for its citizens while
maintaining civil rights and liberties is the goal of European Security
Research. By co-operating and coordinating efforts on a Europe-wide scale, the
EU can better understand and adequately respond to risks in a constantly
changing world and enhance its competitiveness at the same time. Innovative
technological solutions such as advanced video surveillance in public stadium
areas facilitate the action of security authorities. This is a new common
research project involving 23 European security administrations and one United
Nations agency to benefit from each others experience, to avoid duplication and
to obtain a critical mass of resources. The research network, called EU-SEC II,
is funded by the European Commission under the
7 Framework Programme for Research. It
is one, among many, concrete action that will be presented today at the third
European Security Research Conference
Vice President Günter Verheugen, responsible for enterprise and industry
policy including security research said: “The continued risk of
terrorist attacks as well as of natural disasters should not lead to a
limitation to European citizens freedoms. This has led the Commission to fund EU
wide targeted research efforts. Security research can give us the tools to
enhance security while preserving our liberties. We must enhance security but we
must also avoid ‚big brother is watching you‘ solutions. Striking the right
balance remains challenging, in Europe with such a historical diversity. This
underlines the need for non-technological research work also to be covered. The
strong European security research programme will not only improve the security
of citizens as it will also enhance Europe’s competitive edge in high tech
applications”.
Under the authority of Günter Verheugen 1.4 billion Euros from the EU
budget are dedicated to security research. The recently launched call for
proposals is focusing on subjects fight against terrorism, protection of
infrastructures, crisis management and border security and is also going to be
presented to the audience.
The objectives of the conference, jointly organised by the French
presidency and the European Commission are to bring together more than 1000
representatives of the security communities: users such as police forces,
fire-fighters, first responders or border guards, public authorities and
technology suppliers from the public and private sectors. Security research
could only be successful if it effectively brings the final users into the
research projects.
Vice President Jacques Barrot, in charge of Justice, Freedom and Security
policies highlighted the importance of this shared commitment: "Security
Research must provide effective, affordable, flexible and acceptable security
solutions capable of meeting evolving security challenges while fully complying
with the very high standards of rights and guaranties demanded by our citizens.
This requires detailed and transparent work involving public and private sectors
as well as civil society both at EU and National level. Today’s Conference is
exemplary in this regard"
The Commission aims to ensure that its security research programs lead to
practical security solutions, not only bridging the so-called "innovation gap"
but also mirroring security policy priorities. The three financial Framework
programmes in the Justice and Home affairs area – "Solidarity and the
Management of migration flows", "Fundamental rights and justice" and "Security
and safeguarding liberties" with a combined budget of more than 7 billion Euros
increasingly draw on results of research programmes, including EU ones, and
focus on deploying innovating solutions[1].
On Tuesday 30 September, Gijs de Vries, chairman of the ESRIF, the
European Security Research and Innovation Forum, will present the
mid-term results of these research activities after one year of activity. In
ESRIF, public and private stakeholders of the security community are working
towards establishing a Joint Security Research Agenda for Europe for the next
twenty years.
The above mentioned EU-SEC II project aims at contributing to the common
identification of priorities through the creation of a durable structuring
effect of the demand side of the European technology market. Thus, the involved
partners will be able to push the technology suppliers market to effectively
react to meet their exigencies.
Information on FP7 Security Research is available:
http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/security/
Information on ESRIF can be found on:
Information on SRC08 can be found on:
Additional
information on the project EU-SEC II:www.eu-sec.org
DG JLS website:
http://ec.europa.eu/justice_home/index_fr.htm
[1]
http://ec.europa.eu/justice_home/funding/intro/funding_intro_en.htm
Source: http://europa.eu
