Preventing and fighting illicit trafficking of cultural goods

Expected Outcome

Projects should contribute to all of the following expected outcomes:

• Increased evidence collection and intelligence gathering, effective cross-border and cross-domain cooperation and uptake by the Law Enforcement Authorities (LEA) and experts of the consolidated tools and platforms within their operational systems and methodologies in accordance with the different user’s requirements.
• Capacity building and consolidated training ecosystem, developed with concrete, validated, actionable, interactive training materials tailored to the specific needs of different user groups across EU Member States and beyond.
• European Union law enforcement, judiciary and other competent authorities and practitioners gain a better understanding and enhanced capabilities in addressing crimes related to cultural heritage thanks to the consolidations of existing solutions, standardized and tailored trainings and workshops and practical learning materials.
• Actionable solutions to the threat to cultural heritage trafficking by illicit excavations crime that do not necessarily amount to organised crime but are still illegal activities that considerably endanger Europe’s cultural heritage, as well as cultural heritage in third countries.
• A robust and long-term sustainable support framework and plan which will ensure and make operational a long-term cooperation in the prevention and fight of illicit trafficking of cultural goods.

Scope

Trafficking in cultural goods is a serious crime that poses significant threats to cultural heritage, particularly in conflict and crisis areas. This illicit trade involves the illegal import, export, and transfer of ownership of valuable cultural items, including theft from institutions and private collections, looting of archaeological sites, assets laundering and forgery of cultural goods. At the EU level, combatting cultural goods’ trafficking is supported by the EU Security Union Strategy 2020-2025[1], the EU Strategy to Tackle Organised Crime 2021-2025[2], the EU action plan against trafficking in cultural goods[3] and the related Council Conclusions[4], [5],[6], the EU Serious and Organised Crime Threat Assessment (EU-SOCTA)[7]. Cultural goods’ trafficking is a highly specialised criminal market. The criminals range from specialised criminal networks to corrupt dealers or expert dark web traders. Criminal networks and actors active in the area of cultural goods trafficking are characterised by a high degree of expertise and specialised knowledge[8]. To overtake the challenges there is the necessity to use advanced analytics, including machine learning and AI technologies, in order to curate, process and share large volumes of dynamic interoperable and high-quality data and transforming it into meaningful intelligence. By facilitating data exchange across borders and between stakeholders, it would ensure real-time access to relevant information, enhancing collaboration and coordination.

Proposals should strongly build on existing expertise and developments, focusing on (1) developing a cohesive ecosystem to be promoted among LEAs, with integrations and operational interfaces between existing tools, systems (including LEA systems) and the solutions developed to trace, protect, safeguard and repatriate goods, including methodologies for combating crimes through data and network analysis; (2) fostering the utilisation of the aforementioned systems by LEA and push them forward to market readiness level to ensure their effective impact on combating illicit trafficking cases; (3) strengthening the collaboration between the different stakeholders providing effective tools and actionable and standardized training materials for boosting capacity in cataloguing and provenance information analysis; (4) improving data quality, robust data governance and data interoperability across stakeholders and cross borders, improving LEA access to critical databases; (5) provide support to evidence collection thanks to the analysis and interpolation of different sources of information and open source and geospatial intelligence.

Proposals should design and consolidate the solution space, tools and the training ecosystem to demonstrate real uptake and adoption and ensure they reflect the priorities of diverse personas, including law enforcement authorities, customs officials, police authorities, cultural heritage professionals, policymakers and citizens. The training ecosystem should build on the results and findings of relevant national and EU-funded projects, such as for example OPFA-CULT[9], in order to leverage existing knowledge and avoid duplication of effort. The development of these materials should be integrated with existing EU and international legal frameworks and measures on the trafficking of cultural goods, including those applicable beyond EU borders[1] [2] [3]. For police authorities’ training-related aspects, cooperation of successful proposals with CEPOL is expected, provided that the Agency opts out from applying for funding.

The proposals should build on the achievements and findings of related previous national and EU-funded projects as well as create complementarities or synergies with projects and European research infrastructures in the field, such as, for example the ones funded under Horizon Europe Cluster 2 and Cluster 3, ERC, the Internal Security Fund (ISF), Creative Europe, the Union Civil Protection Mechanism (UCPM), the European research infrastructure for heritage science (E-RIHS). Where possible and relevant, synergy-building and clustering initiatives with successful proposals in the same area should be considered, including the organisation of international conferences in close coordination with the Community for European Research and Innovation for Security (CERIS) 18activities and/or other international events.

Proposals are encouraged to seek synergies, and collaboration, with relevant initiatives already developed from international stakeholders working in the field of cultural heritage as well as in the security sector. The creation of new tools and the duplication of existing ones should be avoided; instead, priority should be given to leveraging opportunities for consolidation and maximizing impact. of existing tools and resources.

Scientists and practitioners doing research in the field of Cultural Heritage (such as archaeologists, museologists, art historians or related fields) must have an essential role in the production of the outputs assuring that they efficiently take into account the real needs and problems of the field, as well as in ensuring scientific quality of information and data.

Proposals are encouraged to actively collaborate, create synergies and developments with the European Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage (ECCCH)[13] and the Europol Innovation Lab during the lifetime of the project, including validating the outcomes, with the aim of facilitating future uptake of innovations for the law enforcement community. Proposals should ensure alignment on the formats and standards used to exchange interoperable high-quality data with the Cultural Heritage Cloud.

Beneficiaries may plan their activities opting to provide Financial Support to Third Parties in order to support practitioners (such as Police Authorities, Non-Governmental Organisations/Civil Society Organisations, cultural and creative industries [CCIs], research groups and communities of practitioners in the field of Cultural Heritage) for expanding the proposed work in terms of, for instance, additional user groups and needs, complementary assessments, technology- or methodology-testing activities.

Proposals funded under this topic are expected to actively develop, configure and implement a long-term sustainable governance and cooperation framework which will ensure long term engagement beyond the duration of the funding. Particular emphasis should be placed on the co-creation of a detailed, realistic, and jointly agreed roadmap and validated business model to ensure functionality after the project ends. The model needs to be already validated and operational before the end of the funded project. The scope of the research should include under-studied regions, zones in conflict areas and under environmental disasters, considering existing initiatives, for example the Recommendation on Safeguarding Cultural Heritage in Ukraine[14].

[1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A52020DC0605

[2] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A52021DC0170

[3] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A52022DC0800

[4] Council Conclusions on the fight against trafficking in cultural goods ‒ Council conclusions (8 June 2023) (10249/23)

[5] Concept on Cultural heritage in conflicts and crises. A component for peace and security in European Union’s external action. (9962/21)

[6] Council Conclusions on EU Approach to Cultural Heritage in conflicts and crises (9837/21)

[7] https://www.europol.europa.eu/publications-events/main-reports/socta-report

[8] EUROPEAN UNION SERIOUS AND ORGANISED CRIME THREAT ASSESSMENT 2025. THE CHANGING DNA OF SERIOUS AND ORGANISED CRIME.

[9] https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/portal/screen/opportunities/projects-details/31077817/101003506

[10] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A52020DC0605

[11] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A52021DC0170

[12] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A52022DC0800

[13] https://research-and-innovation.ec.europa.eu/research-area/social-sciences-and-humanities/cultural-heritage-and-cultural-and-creative-industries-ccis/cultural-heritage-cloud_en

[14] https://culture.ec.europa.eu/news/the-eu-presents-expert-recommendations-on-safeguarding-cultural-heritage-in-ukraine