The World Economic Forum suggests that transnational travel will increase by 50% over the next ten years, bringing the number of arrivals to 1.8bn by 2030 before the COVID-19 pandemic. Given the ever-increasing travel both on land and sea, delays and queues are often observed at cases where people are crossing border. These delays create huge frustration for the citizens and at the same time put extra burden to the border authorities staff. In Europe, airports have managed to improve to a certain extend the border crossing through the facial recognition booths for European citizens that own an RFID enabled passport, however there are still huge queues observed. For non-European citizens, the situation is even worse. The border control for land and sea are placing all the effort to the border authorities staff requiring from them to check the passports of the travellers as well as to control the luggage and baggage. Reasonably, even without huge number of travellers, large delays and queues are observed. ODYSSEUS will enable citizens to seamlessly cross the border without stopping, while reducing the workload and improving productivity for Border Guard Authorities by providing highly detailed risk analysis. ODYSSEUS will leverage the power of digital technology offering to citizens the appropriate tools to cross land and sea borders in a secure and seamless manner without stopping while equipping the border authorities with novel tools for secure identity verification and unobtrusive vehicle/luggage/cargo checks, eliminating long delays at border areas. The proposed technologies will allow citizens to cross borders without any intervention by just leveraging their smartphones combined with strong and continuous identity verification. Remote vehicle/luggage scanning through X-Rays and UAVs, will allow authorities to remotely perform the appropriate controls.

CONNECTOR’s vision is to contribute to the European Integrated Border Management (EIBM) and to the EU Customs Action Plan by addressing the need of close cooperation between Customs, Border and Coast Guard Authorities within the current and upcoming challenging and demanding environment of borders’ control by further involving Customs to the Common Information Sharing Environment (CISE) network and Enhanced Common Information Sharing Environment (e-CISE) through the proposed Customs Extended Common Information Sharing Environment (CE-CISE). CONNECTOR aims for the first time to suggest an integrated, common and shared risk assessment approach for all Border Management Authorities, considering the pan-EU common risk indicators per end user group (Customs, Border and Coast Guards Authorities including FRONTEX), to ensure external EU border and secure EU citizens from cross-border crime and/or secure the seamless flow of travellers, as recommended in the multiannual strategic policy document . Thus, in this sense, CONNECTOR proposal, will design and develop the CONNECTOR system as an interoperable technical environment, ensuring close and practical cooperation and information exchange at all levels. The design and the development of the CONNECTOR system will be based on the analysis of current policy initiatives in EU level (directives, policy and staff documents, guidelines etc.) along with needs, gaps and future views of the end-user groups going beyond previous initiatives (ANDROMEDA, MARISA, EFFECTOR, etc.), complying with the Societal, Ethical and Legal (SoEL) requirements and regulations, following the SoEL-by-design principle. The CONNECTOR system will be validated in real operational environment, based on well-defined National, Cross-border and Transnational use cases defined commonly by Customs and Border and Coast Guards authorities, during three (3) long lasting trials (Demonstration and Testing) under standardised methodology.

SMILE proposes a novel mobility concept that addresses the aforementioned challenges by designing, implementing and evaluating in relevant environments (TRL6) prototype management architecture, for the accurate verification, automated control, monitoring and optimization of people’ flows at Land Border Infrastructures. It leverages the capabilities of the smart mobile devices in biometric control for secure and trusted authentication, and elaborates on their exploitation as part of a multimodal biometric verification process that supplements / complements existing approaches. Furthermore, SMILE’s mobility concept builds upon Private Cloud Infrastructure technologies which communicate with remote SMILE handhelds through a secure gateway. SMILE ecosystem will target EU land borders which will be the beneficiaries of the proposed solutions. In fact, the proposed technology and business framework developed in SMILE will be validated through pan-European demonstrations in 3 BCPs. The operational properties of the technologies and overall solution will be validated and evaluated against cost, performance, effectiveness and usability indicators. Use cases will be supported by different architectural designs, which will be classified according to the operation mode. BCPs participating in the project’s pilots will deploy and evaluate the solution at business as usual and emergency situations across various status operations. SMILE aims to (1) minimise the exposure of BCPs to security risks and threats, and (2) help them successfully respond to security incidents, while relieving them from all unnecessary and costly efforts of identifying, acquiring and using the appropriate technology. To this CNBP, HBP & RBP BCP partners will deploy and validate the proposed secure & reliable ecosystem in two use cases (Romania Bulgaria), in which the adaptation of SMILE framework to focused applications will be performed.

Combatting frauds on identity and travel documents is a key mission of law enforcement agencies and border guards. Industries have been working on new means to combat frauds on identity, and public authorities are using numerous technologies to accomplish their mission, but permanent innovation is required to fight highly skilled defrauders. A number of European innovation projects have tested new ways to combat fraud but few of them reached an operational level. EINSTEIN objectives is to enhance significantly existing public authorities’ means through innovation, building on technologies proven in the labs but not mature for an operational usage yet. EINSTEIN will deliver six applications essential to fight identity frauds: 1) online ID issuance using a secure cloud-based server for real-time biometric quality checks and fraud detection, 2) mobile document and identity checks using commercially available smartphones, 3) document authentication module to detect fraudulent documents, 4) pre-registration for land-border crossings including biometrics and DTC, 5) EES kiosk with advanced fraud detection using video surveillance, 6) fast track for enrolled travelers using on-the-move face and iris. To ensure TRL7 at a minimum, practitioners will run six different pilot use cases in their own environment. A key objective is also to ensure interoperability and flexibility of all the components developed in the project so that they can be reused in different contexts, possibly by different providers. Design of open, well-defined, standardized interfaces will allow achieving this objective. Privacy being an essential concern of all European citizens and governments, EINSTEIN will take into account privacy-by-design principles, developing flexible components to ease their customization in order to meet not only the European legislation on data protection but also national legislations on this matter, which vary significantly from one country to the other.

The EU has experienced a surge in fixed border surveillance solutions, including physical barriers, covering 13% of external land borders. The BorderForce project responds to evolving threats by enhancing real-time surveillance capabilities. It introduces a dynamic system, featuring self-sufficient, transportable Command and Control (C2) Stations with configurable and extendable capabilities. These stations incorporate versatile surveillance towers with anti-drone features, integrating data from autonomous monitoring sensors and UAV systems. Dedicated satellite resources, including CubeSat, strategically positioned at high-risk spots, ensure frequent revisits to critical areas. To enable early threat assessment, BorderForce leverages Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT), processing online data for border security threats. The project emphasizes ethical, legal, and social aspects, safeguarding fundamental rights in border surveillance capability development. BorderForce collaborates with EU and candidate country border authorities, customs, and Common Security and Defense Policy (CSDP) entities. It defines scenarios, gathers architecture feedback, and validates end user feedback. The project emphasizes data exchange, novel user interfaces (e.g., XR), and immersive training for collaborative threat assessment, promoting safety and security while upholding fundamental rights. This solution enhances resource sustainability by improving the coordination and deployment of reusable security measures. The BorderForce solution will be validated in 2 field trials to become TRL7. It ensures seamless operations in monitoring the flow of goods, people, and information. Addressing challenges like migration, smuggling, and geopolitical tensions, BorderForce contributes to regional stability, particularly in crises. Overall, it combines technological innovation and international collaboration to bolster border security, prioritizing fundamental rights and ethical considerations.