Context and concept

Context

EU customs authorities have seen their mission to detect and seize maximum amounts of illicit goods on their way to enter the EU become increasingly challenging. Partly due to the growing number of customs declarations and limited customs staff members, this situation can be further explained by the expanding range of threats EU customs have had to face. Next to the “classic cross-border threats” such as drugs and weapons trafficking, cigarette smuggling, duty and other border tax fraud, they are required to deal with a new and complex risk landscape, ranging from counterfeit products and new psychoactive substances to sensitive dual-use technologies and nuclear and radioactive materials.

Concept

Field Trials

The ENTRANCE practitioner partners will have a pivotal role throughout the project in the development of the ENTRANCE Toolbox. To ensure that the solutions developed during the lifetime of the project deliver genuine added value operationally, the project will first identify and analyse the practitioners' views, requirements and preferences.

Practitioner partners will have a key contribution in the identification of the most relevant data sources and datasets that will be integrated into the automated risk-assessment information system, as well as ways to increase quality, quantity and timeliness of data that customs have available for risk assessment.

These defined functional requirements will then be validated during a series of six practitioner-led ENTRANCE field trials. The practitioner partners will assess the functionality and added value of the developed technologies during these trials to ensure we are developing what is needed.