Accredited projects for mobility of learners and staff are implemented by organisations holding an Erasmus accreditation. Each accredited project represents a step in the implementation of the organisation's long-term Erasmus Plan.

Based on the experience and the benefits of participation in ERASMUS + programme (the State Border Guard Service of Lithuania (SBGS) dog handlers and the Border Guard School (BGS) students do not have much opportunities to participate in similar fields of activity in order to improve their international competencies, except when they participate in FRONTEX activities) we want to continue and develop a successful project activities . SBGS Dog Handlers and BGS have defined one general and main objective of the project - to improve the competences of BGS studnets and dog handlers in ensuring border control. Based on this, we have foreseen two target groups in this project - SBGS dog handlers and BGS students. During the project, one mobility visit in Estonian Police and Border Guard Board structural units for the BGS students target group was carried out (5 participant, 12 days long) and four mobility visits for the SBGS Dog Handlers target group (2 Dog Handlers with service dogs per visit, the duration of each visit is 12 days). All in all 5 BGS students and 8 SBGS Dog Handlers has improve border control competencies. As separate goals for the above mentioned target groups were set: For the dog handlers – strengthening of cooperation between border guard services in the field of dog handling at the international level, improving of dog handlers’ training programs, enhancing of dog handlers’ competences as well as skills and professional efficiency in use of service dogs in EU external border control (to prevent illegal border crossings and smuggling of excise goods, explosives, narcotic materials across the EU external border). For the BGS students: 1. to get acquainted with the specifics of the operation of the border guard service structural unit of the partner country, ensuring the protection of the EU external border and the legal regime, the specifics of the organization and implementation of border control; 2. gaining international practical experience in border surveillance (patrols in various patrol units) and border checks (travel, personal and vehicle documents examination); 3. during the internship, prepare a creative task (presentation, writing, etc., assigned or chosen before leaving for mobility); 4. to improve knowledge of English in quantitative and qualitative terms. The participants were enabled to carry out service together with their Estonian counterparts (dog handlers patrolling at the state border with service dogs, BGS cadets patrols in various types of patrols, work at the border crossing point) by implementing foreseen and approved activities in tripartite contracts. Through its activities, the SBGS has directly contributed to the implementation of the FRONTEX Regulation, i.e. the ability of border guards of EU Member States to work together, with a common understanding and application of legislation in border control procedures. High-quality staff ensures proper protection not only of the EU's external borders but also of its internal borders. The dog handlers gained experience in the use and training of service dogs for the protection of the state border and shared best practice to the colleagues of the Police and Border Guard Service of the Republic of Estonia. The project was beneficial for the partners as they also took over the best practices from the project participants. The BGS cadets also improved their border control competences, gained practical and teamwork experience in an international environment. Moreover, foreign language competences were improved of all persons involved in the project. Finally, we are delighted that during the mobility visits, participants twice contributed to saving civil lives (finding a lost elderly woman and timely called help for a man who was spotted outside the partner's structural unit and had a serious medical condition). Partners were very grateful to SBGS and project participants on these specific occasions. +

Current evidence suggests that the global fight against corruption faces serious challenges: policy decisions are not well informed, the corruption landscape is complex and enormous, while measuring corruption is so far mostly based on subjective approaches, and there is lack of appropriate technological tools to support anti-corruption. To address these challenges, FALCON is designed and dedicated to support the composition, update and management of comprehensive corruption intelligence pictures, within domains and jurisdictions of interest. This will be accomplished following a multi-actor, evidence-based, data-driven approach, building upon existing assets and prior work of consortium partners. FALCON will, first, develop and validate objective and actionable indicators (individual and composite) of corruption that can be used to inform policy decisions. Second, it will design, implement and integrate powerful data analytics tools, data pipelines and applications that support the management of the entire lifecycle of corruption intelligence pictures. This will enable comprehensive corruption risk assessment, informed policy making, and improved anticorruption law enforcement. FALCON will be piloted in four corruption domains – corruption schemes at border crossings, sanction circumvention by kleptocrats/oligarchs, public procurement fraud, conflicts of interest of politically exposed persons (PEPs) – involving law enforcement experts (police authorities and border guards) from six (6) European countries and other key actors (i.e., GovTech providers, academia, financial intermediaries, policy makers, NGOs, and civil society). FALCON’s implementation will be incremental and iterative, forming synergies between SSH and technological expertise, and will adhere to the principles of Trustworthy AI and responsible research and innovation. Lastly, FALCON has defined specific key exploitable results and performance indicators for measuring its progress and success.

The D4FLY project will augment the current caThe D4FLY project will augment the current capabilities and capacities of border authorities in countering emerging threats in document and identity verification (e.g., forged documents, impostor fraud, morphed faces) at manual and highly automated border control points and in the issuance process of genuine documents. The confluence of D4FLY set of tools and systems will improve the quality of verification and reduce major time sinks in the processes thus enabling real on-the-move border crossing experience for travelers. Novel sensor hardware based on advanced lightfield cameras and novel algorithms developed in the project will enhance verification accuracy and robustness via the combined usage of 2D+thermal face, 3D face, iris and somatotype biometrics. Analytical means to identify known criminals based on somatotype and 3D face data generated from mugshots and observation data will be developed. Various operational needs of end-users with different threat landscapes constitute the backbone of D4FLY development efforts. D4FLY will create a resilient document verification system that can verify a multitude of physical and electronic security features (e.g. Kinegrams®, MLIs, CLIs), detect complex forms of electronic fraud and advanced morphing, and identify fraud in breeder documents. The potential benefit of blockchain technology in identity verification will also be investigated. The D4FLY solution will consist of a border control kiosk geared with enhanced enrolment, verification and detection capabilities; smartphones applications for improved performance and verification capabilities; and a non-stop on-the-move system for biometric verification. The innovation will be validated against European societal values, fundamental rights, privacy, data protection and applicable legislation. Four different border control points and one document fraud expertise center will form the project’s testing and demonstration ground.

For the past few years, Europe has experienced some major changes at its surrounding territories and in adjacent countries which provoked serious issues at different levels. The European Community faces a number of challenges both at a political and at a tactical level. Irregular migration flows exerting significant pressure to the relevant authorities and agencies that operate at border territories. Armed conflicts, climate pressure and unpredictable factors occurring at the EU external borders, have increased the number of the reported transnational crimes. Smuggling activity is a major concern for Eastern EU Borders particularly, as monitoring the routes used by smugglers is being hindered by mountainous, densely forested areas and rough lands aside with sea or river areas. Due to the severity and the abrupt emergence of events, the relevant authorities operate for a long-time interval, under harsh conditions, 24 hours a day. NESTOR aims to demonstrate a fully functional next generation holistic border surveillance system providing pre-frontier situational awareness beyond maritime and land border areas following the concept of the European Integrated Border Management. NESTOR long-range and wide area surveillance capabilities for detection, recognition classification and tracking of moving targets (e.g. persons, vessels, vehicles, drones etc.) is based on optical, thermal imaging and Radio Frequency (RF) spectrum analysis technologies fed by an interoperable sensors network including stationary installations and mobile manned or unmanned vehicles (aerial, ground, water, underwater) capable of functioning both as standalone, tethered and in swarms. NESTOR BC3i system will fuse in real-time border surveillance data combined with web and social media information, creating and sharing a pre-frontier intelligent picture to local, regional and national command centers in AR environment being interoperable with CISE and EUROSUR.