Warsaw, 19/09/2011 (Agence Europe) - As part of the fifth call for tenders for research projects in the civil security sector (FP7-SEC-2012), the European Commission has selected five areas which will take priority when the funding is earmarked, to reflect the EU's civil security priorities. To be presented by Paolo Salieri (DG Enterprise and Industry) at the Security Research 2011 conference taking place in Warsaw on 19-21 September, the five priority areas are: - organised crime, terrorism, cyber-crime, border security and disaster management (natural and man-made disasters). This means that the research projects must respond to the need to increase the security of European citizens (civil protection, bio security), the security of infrastructure (particularly transport and energy), improve the provision of information and border security and, lastly, develop crisis management “facilitators”. This call for proposals comes as part of the seventh Framework Programme for Research and Development (7FPRD) and has a budgetary envelope of €241 million. Its aim is, firstly, to respond to growing requirements in the field of civil security, and secondly, to make this research sector competitive at an international level. In order to do this, one of the key points is to ensure the interconnectivity and interoperability of systems to be involved in the creation of a European Research Area. The first day of the conference was given over to bringing together representatives of public and private companies, research centres and the Commission and putting them in touch with each other, to make it possible to create new projects, express international cooperation needs and present the results of research and development work on new technologies. (JK/transl.fl)