I527-290 ESRIF Final Report (WEB).indd - European Commission

Introduction
Introduction
Part II of ESRIFs fi nal report consists of the detailed fi ndings of ESRIFs eleven working groups.
Background to ESRIF
EU-level civil security research started in 2004 when the European Commission launched its three-year Preparatory Action
for Security Research (PASR) with a budget of €45 million for 2004-2006. A number of national security research programmes
were also launched during this period. PASR’s purpose was to test the idea of using EU funding for security R&T projects. This
paved the way for today’s fully fl edged European civil security research theme in the EU’s 7 th Framework Programme for
research (FP7) for 2007-2013, which was allocated a budget of € 1.4 billion.
The preparation of both PASR and the FP7 Security theme was supported by high-level strategy groups: the 2004 Group
of Personalities (GoP) for Security Research and the European Security Research Advisory Board (ESRAB) whose
strategic report in 2006 helped shape the scope and implementation of these programmes.
As described in the Introduction to Part I of the Final Report, ESRIF was then established in September 2007, on the basis of a
joint initiative of the European Commission and EU Member States and FP7 Associated States. It has been an informal group,
set up jointly and co-owned by its stakeholders from the demand and supply side of security technologies/solutions as well
as from civil society and with a mandate to develop a ‘European (Joint) Security Research and Innovation Agenda’ for Europe
(ESRIA): a strategic roadmap for security research and related measures to bring greater coherence and effi ciency to the sector,
while promoting innovation 1 .
Internal Organisation
ESRIFs 65 members divided their tasks into specialised areas that were addressed by 11 working groups (WGs). WG5, for
example, focused on foresight and scenarios, and provided methodological guidance as well as the long-term scenario
background perspective that was crucial to ESRIF’s work. Other WGs were set up to focus on security missions (WGs 1-4),
specifi c challenges requiring separate investigation (WGs 6-8) or “horizontal” issues.
In addition, a “Transverse” Committee was created to interlink all WGs and identify common key factors across diff erent fi elds.
The Transverse Committee dealt with issues such as security economics, mediatisation & communication, as well as ethics.
ESRIF’s working groups were organised as follows:
1 See ESRIFs Terms of reference – in annex I
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