GAP ANALYSIS OF EU COUNTERTERRORISM RESEARCH INITIATIVES

摘要

Some of the 27 Member States in the European Union (EU) had gained extensive experience individually in counterterrorism over decades in their fight against well organized groups. However, it required the terror attacks in the U.S. in 2001, in Madrid 2004 and in London 2005 to shape the EU's reaction and to initiate coordinated research activities in the 27 Member States. The current 7~(th) EU Framework Programme (FP7) has allocated ? 1,350 million for Security for the period 2007 to 2013. The key FP7 activities relate to restoring safety and security in case of crisis. The paper provides an analysis of 17 major EU counterterrorism research projects and reviews the U.S. approach to security for comparison. The following main gaps were identified in the implementation of the EU research initiatives: (1) diverse counterterrorism strategies between Member States; (2) insufficient consideration given to terrorism risk-assessment; (3) inadequate coordination/ cooperation between EU funded civil security research and similar research activities by the European Defence Agency (EDA) and European Space Agency (ESA); (4) dominance of EU defence industry over SMEs, universities and R&D organisations; (5) cumbersome bureaucracy in administrating research projects.