SANDERA focuses on the future relationship between two critical European policy domains: namely, the EU strategy since Lisbon to move towards the European Research Area and the EU policies focused on the security of the European citizen in the world.

Over the last decade, the EU has developed a defence and security dimension. This comprises the externally-oriented Common European Security and Defence Policy (CESDP) and a European Security Strategy that guides the EU’s international security strategy with the objective of making the European Union “a credible and effective actor” that is “ready to share in the responsibility for global security and in building a better world”¹. The EU has also developed internally-oriented policies for countering terrorism with the appointment of an EU Counter Terrorism Coordinator and the development of policies designed to prevent, protect, prosecute and respond to terrorism and other security-related risks. These developments have been complemented more recently by a science and technology policy dimension most clearly expressed in the security research activities of the Commission under the Seventh Framework Programme and the defence research activities of the European Defence Agency.

SANDERA’s working hypothesis is that the establishment of security as an element of the European policy mix is the start rather than the end of policy innovation in this field. We believe that the emergence of an explicit defence and security dimension to EU science and technology policy represents a discontinuous policy innovation of potentially profound significance to the future character of European science and technology policy and the move towards the European Research Area. Accordingly, SANDERA will examine how future developments in European security and defence policies combined with technological change and the evolution of European science and technology policies could interact in intended and unintended ways to affect the pace and character of the move towards the ERA as well as priorities for the 8th Framework Programme.

¹ A Secure Europe in a Better World. European Security Strategy. Brussels, 12 December 2003.