Starting with 2014, the Romanian Border Police acts as a coordinator within a European research project aimed at enhancing the surveillance of the EU land borders, which is supported by the European Commission and in which authorities from several member states - Finnish Border Guard, Guardia Civil of Spain and the Center for Security Studies of Greece (KEMEA) – Greek Ministry of Internal Affairs, participate as partners.
Thus, after a series of negotiations and an elaboration period of the documents which lasted for approximately two years, in 2014, the Romanian Border Police, together with 3 external partners, launched a European research and development project, financed by the European Commission through FP 7 - EWISA "Early Warning for Increased Situational Awareness".
EWISA project was launched on 01.09.2014, when the signing of the Framework Financial Agreement with the EC, as well as the partnership agreement with all the members of the consortium took place.
Having a budget of approximately 14 million Euros, at the end of the implementation period which lasts for 46 months, the project aims to obtain a video analysis system which any EU member state can beneficiate from, and which will improve the reaction capacity of the authorities responsible with the surveillance of the land border. It is aimed to obtain a more detailed operational situation through the combination of video and radar images with the other sources of information, such as the databases, as well as the automatic reading of the characters, automatic detection of movements and the numbering of targets and detection of anomalies.
The concept of the project was developed based on the risk analysis results, being adapted to the current security context at the EU level, so that the intervention performances in real time would be improved. The threats are the following: illegal migration, smuggling, trafficking with drugs and dangerous materials, trafficking with weapons.
The massive flow of migrants crossing the land borders of EU in the last year, it is the clear evidence that the reaction capacity of the authorities responsible with the surveillance of the border has to be increased through the creation of an early warning system, which will enable them to act in useful time.
Currently, the first two work packages within the project, respectively the Analysis of Necessities and the Strategy, within which the operational needs at the external land borders of the EU member states were defined, as well as the scenarios where the final results will be tested.
In order to maximize the results and to cover a larger geographical and operational area, 4 different scenarios were defined, at the external land borders of the partners. The scenarios cover a wide range of surveillance systems at the border and represent a proper environment for testing the final solutions.
In this respect, the concrete results of the project will be tested in the areas identified for scenarios and in real field conditions, at the external border of EU, as follows: in Romania, at the border with Ukraine, in Finland at the border with Russia, in Greece at the border with Turkey and in Spain, specifically in Melilla (North Africa) at the border with Morocco.
Also, the project teams of the 4 partner member states are working on the finalization of bidding documents. The bid will concern research and development services and will be organized according to the national and community laws in the public purchase field.
In March 2016, in Athens, a day for the presentation of the project will be organized in which all the interested persons are invited to participate, any feedback received as a result of the activity is welcome. All the official notices will be published on the official websites of the project and of the partner institutions and the public bid notice will be published in the Official Journal of EU.