The Joint Research Centre (JRC) the European Commission’s own research centre. Its main role is to provide scientific and technical support to European Commission and other EU Institutions on policy making and implementation. In particular, the mission of the Institute for the Protection and Security of the Citizen (IPSC) is to provide research results and to support EU policy-makers in their effort towards global security and protection of European citizens from accidents, deliberate attacks, fraud and illegal actions against EU policies. JRC is located in several EU member states and has more than 2750 members of staff, mostly scientists and engineers. Its headquarters are located in Brussels. IPSC, together with several laboratories and 3 other Institutes, is located at Ispra, near Milan, Italy.
The IPSC action that will responsible for FastPass is SURCIT, which, in the frame of the Digital Citizens’
Security unit, deals with Surveillance and Biometrics from the Citizen’s perspective, i.e. the use of smart surveillance and biometrics technologies that ensure all necessary security functionalities without compromising any of the citizens’ fundamental rights. The role of JRC in the project will be focused exactly on that: ensuring that border control functions are taken care while taking on-board privacy and other societal rights/concerns
The participation of JRC in FastPass is a unique opportunity for JRC to approach in a systematic way important technical, standardisation and societal issues involved in border control and ABC technology in order to provide relevant advice and support EU policy-makers in these matters.