Projects’ results are expected to contribute to all of the following outcomes:

• Building Police Authorities’ capabilities to identify, prevent and investigate major contemporary and/or emerging criminal activities;
• Development of tools, methods or manuals for Police Authorities, improving their effectiveness in detecting crimes, collecting evidence and investigating cases of major contemporary and/or emerging criminal activities;
• Development of training curricula, for Police Authorities, prosecutors, as well as judicial actors on major contemporary and/or emerging criminal activities, raising their awareness about impact of cultural and societal issues on the categories of crime and/or violence under consideration.

Scope:

Under the Open Topic, proposals are welcome to address both existing and upcoming challenges in fighting crimes strongly influenced by cultural and/or societal issues that are not covered by the other topics of Horizon Europe Calls Fighting Crime and Terrorism 2021-2022, Fighting Crime and Terrorism 2023 and Fighting Crime and Terrorism 2024.

Adapted to the nature, scope and type of proposed activities, proposals should convincingly explain how they will plan and/or carry out demonstration, testing or validation of developed tools and solutions. Proposals should also delineate the plans to develop possible future uptake and upscaling at national and EU level for possible next steps after the research project completion.

If applicable research proposals should consider building on previous research, including but not limited to, research stemming from Horizon Framework Programmes.

If relevant for the proposals, coordination scheme should be implemented for the successful proposals submitted under this topic, as well as with the successful proposals funded under other topics of this or previous Horizon Europe Fighting Crime and Terrorism calls.

Activities proposed within this topic should address, in a balanced way, both technological and societal dimensions of the issue under consideration.

This topic requires the effective contribution of SSH disciplines and the involvement of SSH experts, institutions as well as the inclusion of relevant SSH expertise, in order to produce meaningful and significant effects enhancing the societal impact of the related innovation activities.

Specific Topic Conditions:

Activities are expected to achieve TRL 5-6 by the end of the project – see General Annex B.