Strengthened security research and innovation

EU R&I funding has contributed substantially to knowledge and value creation in the field of civil security and to the consolidation of an ecosystem better equipped to capitalise on research and innovation to support the EU’s security priorities. However, a key challenge remains in improving the uptake of innovation.

There are factors that limit the impact of EU security R&I by hindering the uptake of its outcomes. They include market fragmentation, cultural barriers, analytical weaknesses, ethical, legal and societal considerations and a lack of synergies between funding instruments, among others. Such factors equally affect the various security domains and complex relationships between them are difficult to disentangle.

The aim of the Strengthened Security Research and Innovation (SSRI) area is to create a favourable environment to generate the knowledge required to tackle the above-mentioned factors.

The CERIS SSRI working group will be the designated platform to foster a more structured dialogue between all relevant market actors. It will allow for the exchange of knowledge to enable increased innovation uptake that reverberates on a more competitive and resilient EU security technology and industrial base, hence contributing to increasing the security of supply of EU-products in critical security areas.

The SSRI platform will address the industrial dimension of security R&I across all security domains and will touch upon matters such as innovation procurement, standardisation, valorisation of research outcomes and the exploitation of synergies within and beyond security. It will also address cross-cutting R&I matters with the aim to reduce sector-specific bias and break thematic silos that impede the proliferation of common EU solutions. Finally, the SSRI working group will foster the exchange of knowledge and good practice for a more impactful security R&I investment, including by sharing results from relevant studies and fostering the debate around tools, methods and techniques to measure the progress and performance of security R&I.