Frontex – the European Border and Coast Guard Agency – is pleased to announce the publication of its 2024 Call for Proposals under the Frontex Research Grants Programme, dedicated to small-scale research projects on “Novel Technologies for Futureproofing the EU External Borders”.
Academic institutions and non-profit organisations are invited to submit their research project proposals no later than 11 February 2025.
The overall goal of this initiative is to enhance the capabilities of the European border and coast guards by supporting the development of cutting-edge technologies.
A total of €360,000 is available to co-fund projects in the following areas:
- Technologies for border surveillance and situational awareness
- Technologies for border checks
- Information and communication management technologies
- Data analytics
- Simulation tools
- Technologies supporting the European Border and Coast Guard’s Standing Corps and logistics
- Advanced technologies for environmentally sustainable border and coast guard operations
- Disruptive, emerging, and key enabling technologies.
To accelerate research in the areas that are of particular interest to Frontex, this year’s call encourages proposals focusing on border surveillance and situational awareness.
The selected projects, which will run for 6 to 12 months, will receive a grant of up to €60,000 to reimburse up to 90% of their eligible costs to develop proofs-of-concept or prototypes that address specific border security challenges. Applications are welcome from both individual entities and consortia of up to four co-applicants.
All application documents and the full Call for Proposals document may be downloaded here.
For a quick overview, we encourage the prospective applicants to read the factsheet.