Civil security policies, research priorities and budgets are expanding quickly across the 27 EU nations, with direct operational and economic implications for public and private stakeholders at all levels of society. Hundreds of million of euros each year are funding new research projects and procurement and the EU budget for civil security alone is growing over 13% in 2010.     But the EU’s civil security policy and research agendas are complex. Whether your organisation currently has or plans to develop technologies for civil security applications, you NEED to be aware of the EU’s:

Identifying opportunities in this policy landscape requires time and resources.   Tracking and making sense of the EU’s civil security agenda for all the stakeholders - ahead of the opportunities - is the raison d’etre of SecEUR (see ‘our products & services’).

Contact us and put our experience and insider knowledge to work for you.  

FLASH ALERT . . .

Here are some security-related policy developments and events we think readers should be aware of:

Future EU-US data-exchange rules. The European Commission opened consultations on 5 February with all stakeholders involved in personal data protection and the transatlantic transfer or sharing of information for law enforcement purposes. Closing on 12 March, stakeholder in-put will be fed into the Commission's future negotiations for a new EU-US data protection-and-sharing agreement. To participate in consultations, see: http://ec.europa.eu/yourvoice/consultations/index_en.htm

Maritime data. The BLUEMASSMED project was launched in Paris at a conference in mid- January, and is the first step toward developing a European network for maritime surveillance in the Mediterranean and its Atlantic approaches. The governments of France, Greece, Italy, Malta, Portugal and Spain are cooperating on the project. Funding is provided by the Commission and the six nations. BLUEMASSMED aims to strengthen collective action against illicit trafficking, illegal immigration and environmental pollution as well as search and rescue. The project will last two years. (See related story in this issue on France's maritime prefect. Project home page: http://www.bluemassmed.net/

New counter-terrorism centre in Brussels. Washington-based Centre on Global Counterterrorism Cooperation (CGCC) opened its branch in January in the Belgian capital. The centre will examine how the EU can help countries beyond its borders regarding the UN's Counter-terrorism strategy. Thomas Renard, CGCC's head, says the group will also explore funding potential for their projects, which focus on strengthening regional organisations in Africa and elsewhere, border monitoring and the training of police and customs officials. He said CGCC will lobby to put counter-terrorism higher on the EU's agenda. Their website: http://www.globalct.org/index.php

Real-time video from space. Luxembourg's Ministry of Research is funding a study of the usefulness of providing real-time video from satellites. The idea would be to set up an interactive Earth observation system whose video image data could be accessed with no delay, thus serving as a tool for emergency services regarding natural or manmade disasters. Luxembourg-based LuxSpace - a subsidiary of OHB Technology AG of Bremen, Germany - is carrying out the study, which will be publicly available later this year. (See related story in this issue on use of UAVs and space communications) Contact: http://www.luxspace.lu

HEADLINES . . .

     BRUSSELS - Frontex, the European Union's external border management agency located in Warsaw, stands to benefit from a bigger budget and changes in the way it operates as the EU's new Stockholm Programme of justice and home affairs (JHA) objectives are implemented. One tantalising prospect is the extension of Frontex border management activities to To read more, subscribe >>

     BRUSSELS - Europe has no choice but to pursue far more systematic development of dual-use security capabilities and technologies that can be used for either civil or military purposes, argue top EU policymakers and military officials. But can the Union and its 27 member states get there?
     Though the EU's new Lisbon Treaty provides the policy justification for a dual-use approach to support convergence between the EU's external and internal security agendas, this will not occur without a To read more, subscribe >>

     BRUSSELS - One of the most tantalizing technologies for dual-use application is unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) since they can be used for military intelligence/reconnaissance or for surveillance of forest fires and flood zones, search-and-rescue and many other areas of civil security. UAVs are also one of the few capabilities where EU civil and military agencies have moved in step to prepare for the devices' ability to fly autonomously and safely across Europe's commercial airspace.
     If there is any setback to their target date of 2015 for finalizing autonomous UAV flights, however, it will likely stem from To read more, subscribe >>

     BRUSSELS - Probably the biggest challenge the EU faces as it bulks up spending on civil security research and capability development in the future will be to ensure that R&D projects deliver real value to end-users and - more crucially - that the latter actually absorb the new capabilities. As a general rule of thumb, this has not been the case though it is still too early to draw any definite conclusion.
     The over-riding problems are twofold. The first is To read more, subscribe >>

     BRUSSELS - What impact will the EU's reform Lisbon Treaty and its new Stockholm Programme of justice and home affairs objectives have on Europol, the union's recently formalised police agency? The big question for the long term is: will Europol become the EU's version of the FBI?
     According to Michel Quillé, Europol's deputy director and head of governance, any move toward an FBI-type structure would have to focus initially on To read more, subscribe >>

      BRUSSELS - The 27 member states are struggling to define how to share data and create fast reaction times among national agencies and across the EU regarding a future common maritime awareness and alerting system for the union.
      In the first of an occasional series on national approaches in this domain, SECURITY EUROPE offers its readers the following analysis of French maritime security policy and structure. France is a country that has long imposed a strict To read more, subscribe >>

     European countries are heavily involved in humanitarian work in earthquake-stricken Haiti, with funding and assets flowing from both the European Commission and national disaster relief authorities. Indeed, several teams of EU experts and national capability "modules" of pre-assigned equipment coordinated by the Commission were quick to deploy to the Caribbean country after the 12 January disaster.
     Lessons learned from first-time foreign-deployed national capability modules to Haiti will be fed into the EU's on-going To read more, subscribe >>