Today, we share ENACT’s first analytical report – an analysis of the EU priorities within the fight against crime and terrorism (FCT) research and innovation (R&I) ecosystem over the period 2014 – 2024. This report is compiled by the ENACT consortium and is based on an analysis of Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe topics from the calls from 2014 to 2024 against the EU Civil Security Market Taxonomy.
The analysis shows an uneven distribution of priorities along the different areas of interest, both in the policy and in the functions dimensions across the 10 years of FCT research topics. In the policy dimension, the analysis shows the emphasis put by the Commission services in the research on Economic crime, corruption and fraud, the Trafficking of humans and goods and, notably Illegal markets in the dark web.
Regarding the Functions dimension, the most frequent research needs are Investigation & Forensics, and Data, information & intelligence gathering management, and exploitation. Finally, in regards to technology, and despite EU-funded security research being mostly non-prescriptive in terms of the typology of technologies to be employed to address the posed challenges, Internet-based investigation technologies and Data analytics technologies are most frequently referenced.