Origin

The EU’s first steps toward security research began after the terrorist events of September 2001 when an assemblage of European experts known as the “Group of Personalities” handed over their report “Research for a Secure Europe [559 KB] ” to the EU.

This prompted the European Parliament in 2003 to request a preparatory plan from the Commission to test the idea of using EU funding for security-oriented R&D. That, in turn, led to the launch of the 2003-2006 Preparatory Action in Security Research, more commonly known as  PASR [169 KB] . For a full list of former PASR projects click here [3 MB] .

PASR’s modest EUR 45 million budget, for three years (2004-2006), was used to fund a number of small-scale security research and innovation projects. Aside from the technologies developed and tested, these projects also explored whether industry, academia, government and societal groups could work together toward a common cause: to boost Europe’s security and promote the sector’s innovation. PASR laid the ground for today’s much larger EUR 1.4 Security Research budget.