ENACT has published its first external expert analytical report on ‘Digital Capability Readiness in EU Law Enforcement: Evidence from Horizon FCT Projects‘. The report, coordinated throught the ENACT Capabilities Observatory and written by external experts Mara Mignone, Agnese Raimondi and Valentina Scioneri from Sociography, focuses on the impact of AI on law enforcement and what that means in practice for those who have access to them.
Read the report: Digital Capability Readiness in EU Law Enforcement: Evidence from Horizon FCT Projects
Executive Summary
This report investigates what “capability” means for European Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs) adopting Artificial Intelligence (AI)-supported investigative tools, and puts forward a working hypothesis: that the operational value of these tools depends less on their technical sophistication than on agencies’ capacity to absorb, govern and embed them into day-to-day practice.
The analysis draws on the following complementary strands of evidence: a review of the academic and policy literature on absorptive capacity, dynamic capabilities, and technology-adoption models; a mapping of thirteen Horizon 2020 (H2020) and Horizon Europe (HE) Fighting Crime and Terrorism (FCT) projects against an organisational readiness framework (Skills, Processes, Coordination, Culture); a primary empirical base of 894 questionnaire responses and 28 semi-structured interviews with LEA staff across several EU Member States, especially drawn from the ANITA, ARIEN, PARSEC and BORDERLINK H2020/HE projects; the authors’ own professional experience, which directly informs the recommendations put forward.
Three findings stand out:
- Cross-border and inter-agency cooperation needs are a live concern for end users, even where they are not the object of inquiry, pointing to a strategic need to capture these needs more systematically within FCT project design.
- Workforce readiness does not simply track seniority. Training needs peak among staff at an intermediate career stage, not among the most junior or the most experienced, and strongly co-occur with the need for explainable AI outputs, suggesting that comprehension, not mere exposure to a tool, is the precondition for trust.
- Organisational fit, not technical performance, is the most frequently cited barrier to tool adoption. Compatibility with existing systems, roles and procedures matters more to end users than any shortcoming of the tool itself, and different capability constraints concentrate at different levels of leadership.
These findings carry direct implications for EU FCT Research and Innovation (R&I) governance, examined in relation to the AI Act’s evolving compliance timeline and the practical demands of inter-agency data sharing in the customs and postal domain.
Building on this evidence, the report puts forward twenty-two recommendations, structured around the report’s three guiding questions:
- (Q1) Which skills, processes and coordination capabilities determine whether LEAs can translate research outputs into operational practice?
- (Q2) How are training, pilot validation and end-user engagement currently designed and assessed in EU-funded FCT projects, and with what recurring strengths and weaknesses?
- (Q3) How can capability development be embedded more systematically in FCT R&I?
Recurring themes include differentiating measures by career stage, function and leadership tier; treating organisational fit and explainability on a par with technical specifications; strengthening coordination across training bodies, agencies and borders from the design stage; and ensuring training materials and capability-building outlive the funded project’s own lifecycle.
This report was prepared by External Experts Mara Mignone, Agnese Raimondi and Valentina Scioneri under the Capabilities Observatory of ENACT.
We’re collecting feedback on this report through the EU Survey Platform, if you’d like to share your thoughts please click on the link below.