Study on Civil Security R&D in major third countries (SER3CO) : Final Report, within the Framework Contract of Security Studies – ENTR/09/050

Policy attention to the security industry increased substantially after the terrorist attacks in the U.S. on September 11th, 2001. With an increased demand for security, the global security market grew a tenfold to around €100 billion in 2011. Many studies expect that growth of the worldwide security market will continue to exceed the growth rate of world GDP. In summer 2012 the European Commission launched an action plan for an innovative and competitive security industry to enhance growth and increase employment in the EU’s security industry. Better understanding of the main competitive strengths and weaknesses of the security industries in the EU and in major other countries should facilitate the development of policy measures to generate a business environment that enables the EU security industry to keep its leading position. One of the main problems in the EU security market identified by the Commission is its fragmentation along national and sometimes even regional boundaries. One of the first steps to address this problem the Commission proposes is to set up an EU-wide certification system for airport screening (detection) equipment and for alarm systems 3. Insight in costs and benefits of harmonized certification schemes will provide essential information for establishing such schemes at the EU level. ... The study has been executed by a team of specialists from the framework consortium partners ECORYS, DECISION and TNO, in collaboration with associated partners FOI (Sweden), HCSS (the Netherlands) and PLANCONSULT (Austria). The latter were invited for their access to sources and contacts in respective countries.