EU-wide Advantages and Opportunities for Call HORIZON-CL3-2025-01-FCT-03

1. Single Market Access (450+ million citizens)

• Pan-European deployment of law-enforcement tech – tools validated inside the project can be commercialised or rolled out in every Member State without customs or tariff barriers, dramatically expanding the addressable market for security SMEs and technology providers.

• Unified procurement channels – the Directive on public procurement (2014/24/EU) enables joint cross-border purchasing by Police Authorities, allowing solutions piloted in one country to be bought jointly by several others, accelerating uptake and generating larger contract volumes.

• Data network effects – a larger pool of operational data (financial transactions, travel records, encrypted communications) improves AI/ML accuracy, something a single-state market cannot replicate.

2. Cross-Border Collaboration & Knowledge Exchange

• Mandatory consortium composition (≥3 Police Authorities from ≥3 MS/AC) immediately creates a transnational practitioner network that can outlast the project.

• Interoperable demonstrations – Horizon IA status obliges real-life pilots; running them concurrently in multiple jurisdictions tests scalability and gathers comparative evidence on criminal modi operandi.

• Link with Europol Innovation Lab – ensures continuous two-way flow between project R&I teams and frontline analysts, maximising operational relevance and future uptake via Europol’s Innovation Radar and Innovation Marketplace.

3. Alignment with Core EU Policies

• EU Security Union Strategy 2020–2025 – delivers directly on the flagship action “Enhancing Europe’s Intelligence Picture on Organised Crime”.

• Digital Europe & European Data Strategy – proposals can incorporate common European data spaces (e.g. the Law Enforcement Data Space) and leverage GAIA-X trust frameworks.

• Green Deal synergies – crime prevention solutions that also reduce resource use (e.g. cloud-native analytics versus on-prem hardware) contribute to Green Deal carbon-reduction targets, improving policy coherence scores at evaluation.

4. Regulatory Harmonisation Benefits

• Schengen Information System, Prüm II & e-Evidence Regulation alignment – developing APIs or middleware that natively respects these EU instruments avoids costly national re-engineering.

• Fundamental Rights by Design – common baseline from the Charter and GDPR lets consortia develop privacy-preserving analytics once for all 27+ countries instead of re-negotiating national data-protection dialects.

5. Access to Europe’s Innovation Ecosystem

• Top-tier RTOs and universities – CEA (FR), Fraunhofer (DE), VTT (FI), KU Leuven (BE) etc. bring cutting-edge cyber-forensics, quantum-safe cryptography, and social-science expertise.

• Living Labs & Test Beds – EU Urban Security Partnership, EU-LISA test environments, DG HOME’s sandbox for AI in law enforcement allow safe, realistic validation.

• Talent mobility – Marie Skłodowska-Curie and ERC grantees can be seconded into the project, enriching skills mix without additional cost.

6. Funding Synergies & Blended Finance

• Internal Security Fund (ISF) – can finance follow-up national roll-outs of prototypes proven under this Horizon grant.

• Digital Europe Programme (DIGITAL) – €7.5 bn for data spaces, AI testing facilities and advanced digital skills can enlarge or maintain infrastructures post-project.

• InvestEU Security & Defence window – provides loan guarantees for scale-up companies that commercialise project results.

• European Defence Fund (EDF) – dual-use elements (e.g. maritime surveillance against trafficking) can secure further R&D funding.

7. Scale and Impact Potential

• Wider transnational threat coverage – trafficking routes, cybercrime infrastructures and illicit financial flows are inherently cross-border; an EU-wide project can map entire supply chains instead of fragments.

• Standard-setting capability – project outputs can feed CEN/CENELEC or ETSI work items, anchoring technologies in EU standards and boosting global export potential.

• Policy feedback loop – evidence generated can immediately inform ongoing legislative reviews (e.g. AML package, Digital Services Act enforcement), granting the consortium agenda-setting influence.

8. Unique Strategic Value of Operating at EU Scale

• Economies of scope in intelligence fusion – combining customs, border, police, and private-sector data across jurisdictions multiplies detection power (e.g. identifying poly-criminal networks active in drugs, counterfeit goods and environmental crime).

• Resilience through diversity – piloting in different legal, linguistic and operational contexts stress-tests solutions, ensuring robustness before pan-EU adoption.

• Political legitimacy – EU funding signals neutrality and shared ownership, facilitating adoption by Member States that might otherwise resist ‘foreign’ solutions.

9. Actionable Opportunities for Applicants

1. Build a consortium that pairs at least three Police Authorities with tech SMEs, RTOs and ethics/legal scholars to score highly on Excellence & Impact.

2. Integrate Copernicus and/or Galileo/EGNOS for geospatial components to satisfy eligibility and tap free EU satellite data.

3. Design modular, GDPR-compliant secure information-exchange layers that align with e-Evidence and Europol Regulation annexes, boosting chances of future policy uptake.

4. Plan test cases in at least three crime domains (e.g. firearms trafficking, online child sexual abuse, waste-trafficking) to demonstrate versatility and maximise evaluation marks under ‘Relevance to the call’.

5. Secure Letters of Intent from ISF managing authorities or HOME DG to illustrate credible post-project deployment pathways.

10. Conclusion

Leveraging the EU’s single market, harmonised legal framework, dense innovation networks and complementary funding instruments, this Horizon Innovation Action offers unparalleled potential to create, validate and scale cutting-edge solutions against organised crime. Operating at EU level moves projects from isolated national pilots to interoperable, standards-ready capabilities with genuine continental reach and global export prospects.