SERVICIUL DE PROTECTIE SI PAZA

Their core work

Romania's Protection and Guard Service (SPP) is the national agency responsible for protecting senior state officials and critical facilities. In the H2020 context, SPP acts as a law enforcement end-user that validates and tests security technologies in real operational environments — from border surveillance systems and counter-terrorism platforms to AI-driven situational awareness tools. Their value lies in providing authentic operational requirements and testing grounds that technology developers cannot access otherwise, ensuring research outputs actually work for the agencies that will deploy them.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

SPP's early projects (2016-2018) focused on physical border security and forensic video analysis — detecting drones at sea borders, analyzing video evidence for criminal cases. From 2019 onward, the focus shifted decisively toward IoT-enabled autonomous platforms, AI-driven cyber threat monitoring, and real-time situational awareness using augmented reality and sensor fusion. Their most recent projects (2021-2024) add a human-factors dimension with serious games for training and team awareness tools, suggesting a move from pure technology testing toward operational readiness and personnel preparedness.

SPP is moving from passive technology testing toward integrated AI command-and-control platforms with augmented reality interfaces, making them an increasingly sophisticated end-user partner for next-generation security systems.

How they like to work

SPP overwhelmingly participates as a consortium partner (12 of 13 projects), with one coordinator role on CREST — their largest project at EUR 541K. They operate in large consortia (177 unique partners across 28 countries), which is typical for EU security research where end-user validation requires broad multi-stakeholder consortia. Their role is consistent: they are the operational end-user who defines requirements, tests prototypes, and validates results in realistic scenarios.

With 177 unique consortium partners across 28 countries, SPP has one of the broadest networks among Romanian security actors in H2020. Their reach spans nearly all EU member states, reflecting the pan-European nature of security research consortia.

What sets them apart

As a national protection service — not a police force or military unit — SPP brings a distinctive VIP security and critical infrastructure protection perspective that few other end-users in EU security research can offer. Their 13-project track record makes them one of the most active LEA end-users in Eastern Europe, giving technology developers access to operational validation from a region often underrepresented in security consortia. For consortium builders, SPP provides the credibility of a real government security agency willing to test and deploy research outputs.

Highlights from their portfolio

• CREST
  SPP's only coordinator role and largest project (EUR 541K) — an IoT-enabled autonomous platform combining AI, blockchain, and computer vision for crime and terrorism detection.
• ROBORDER
  High-profile project on autonomous robot swarms for border surveillance, running 4 years (2017-2021) and representing the intersection of robotics and security.
• LAW-GAME
  Represents SPP's newest direction — using serious games, VR, and AI for experiential law enforcement training, their second-largest funding at EUR 224K.