The illicit cigarette trade alone costs European governments around €10 billion in lost tax revenues every year.
In addition to cigarette smuggling, drugs and weapons trafficking, duty and other border tax fraud, customs authorities are facing an even more complex landscape with counterfeit products, new psychoactive substances and nuclear and radioactive materials.
ENTRANCE is a European-funded H2020 research project, delivering important and innovative technological solutions to improving customs security.
Customs practitioners are right at the heart of the ENTRANCE project and ensure that the solutions developed deliver genuine added value operationally.
The ENTRANCE technical teams are developing a comprehensive and integrated Toolbox for risk-based Non-Intrusive Inspection of cross-border cargo at European rail, road and sea border crossings.
By implementing automated technologies, a larger number of threats and illegal cargo can be detected more efficiently with less impact on the flow of goods. The results will be shared between different European customs’ agencies.
This toolbox consists of:
- Non-Intrusive Inspection technologies for detecting contraband hidden in high-density cargo.
- A relocatable unit containing an improved X-ray and Integrated Rapidly Relocatable Tagged Neutron Inspection System with, for the first time, a mobile photofission detection system.
- A relocatable unit containing an improved X-ray with, for the first time, a mobile photofission detection system.
- Integrated Rapidly Relocatable Tagged Neutron Inspection System.
- A Trans-European network of new Radiation Portal Monitors for the passive detection of illicit nuclear and radioactive material.
- Novel static high-speed Radiation Portal Monitors, which also detect nuclear and radioactive materials.
- And finally, ENARTIS - the ENTRANCE Automated Risk Assessment, Threat Recognition and Information Sharing Platform.
All of these technologies will be fully tested and validated at rail, road and sea border crossing points in a series of practitioner-led trials in the Slovak Republic, Bulgaria, Croatia and Belgium in 2023.
ENTRANCE: developing innovative technologies to enhance the protection of European borders with the minimum disruption to the flow of goods.
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