ENLIGHTEN responds to the first part of the EURO-4 call on “The future of European integration - 'More Europe – less Europe?'” by bringing together an interdisciplinary ‘next generation’ research team that integrates insights from Comparative Political Economy, European Studies, International Political Economy, and Sociology. ENLIGHTEN answers the call by focusing on how European modes of governance respond to ‘fast-burning’ and ‘slow-burning’ crises. These types of crises differ in how they affect the legitimacy of European input, output, and throughput processes in established and emergent modes of governance. In fast-burning crises interests are quickly formed and ideational and resource battles ensue over how to coordinate policy ideas, what institutions should be engaged, and communicating these changes to the public. Networks in fast crises are composed of defined groups seeking to protect or carve out their interests. In slow-burning crises interests are less obvious and the key task is often how to define the issues involved and who should address the problem. Here networks are commonly composed of experts who battle over how issues should be defined, as well as the boundaries on how coordinative and communicative discourses are articulated. Both fast- and slow-burning crises must be addressed by European modes of governance, with serious implications for the legitimacy and efficiency of the European project. Both raise political, social, and economic sensitivities that are transforming democratic politics in Europe. ENLIGHTEN addresses these themes through a series of linked cases that speak directly to the legitimacy and efficiency of European modes of governance.

Since 2008 'fiscal leaks' have become an immediate policy challenge for EU governments, partly as a result of tax abuse. The COFFERS project unfolds as EU tax authorities transition to a new era in tackling tax abuse based upon policy innovation at the OECD, EU and national levels. COFFERS recognizes this creates a state of flux where much tax authority expertise regarding past regulations, systems and practices is now irrelevant and understanding has, instead, to focus upon the on-going change process. Deploying principles of evolutionary political economy COFFERS both studies and is an integral part of this change process. COFFERS recognizes that identifying and tackling the tax gap to relieve inequality is the ultimate aim. Noting the tax gap exists both domestically and internationally and ranges from criminal money laundering to sophisticated tax avoidance, COFFERS benchmarks current understanding of these issues, undertakes comparative analysis of approaches taken to tackle them across EU Member States, and assesses resources being allocated to the task of closing the tax gap. In parallel expert networks in business, the tax profession, secrecy jurisdictions and the criminal economy that develop the mechanisms undermining the expected effectiveness of tax systems will be appraised, especially with regard to responses to regulatory changes taking place. This results in COFFERS outputs that transmit analysis, risk assessment and policy advice. Deliverables of use to EU tax authorities include new tax gap analyses by state, tax risk maps identifying risk by jurisdiction, a new anatomy of money laundering risk, and tools to help tax authorities understand the risks that they face domestically and internationally. COFFERS delivers value for money in enhancing tax yield, effectiveness in creating the tools to achieve that goal, and behavioural change in taxpayers and their advisers as a result of recommendations made, all with the aim of reducing inequality.

This Project aims to address an increasingly pressing global challenge: How to achieve the EU’s development goals and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, while meeting the global target of staying within two degrees global warming and avoid transgressing other planetary boundaries. EU policies must align with sustainable development goals (Article 11 TFEU). The impacts of climate change and global loss of natural habitat undermine the progress achieved by pursuing the Millennium Development Goals and threaten the realisation of EU development policy goals. Our focus is the role of EU’s public and private market actors. They have a high level of interaction with actors in emerging and developing economies, and are therefore crucial to achieving the EU’s development goals. However, science does not yet cater for insights in how the regulatory environment influences their decision-making, nor in how we can stimulate them to make development-friendly, environmentally and socially sustainable decisions. Comprehensive, ground-breaking research is necessary into the regulatory complexity in which EU private and public market actors operate, in particular concerning their interactions with private and public actors in developing countries. Our Consortium, leading experts in law, economics, and applied environmental and social science, is able to analyse this regulatory complexity in a transdisciplinary and comprehensive perspective, both on an overarching level and in depth, in the form of specific product life-cycles: ready-made garments and mobile phones. We bring significant new evidence-based insights into the factors that enable or hinder coherence in EU development policy; we will advance the understanding of how development concerns can be successfully integrated in non-development policies and regulations concerning market actors; and we provide tools for improved PCD impact assessment as well as for better corporate sustainability assessment.

With the rise and spread of ICT-enabled crimes and illicit financial flows (IFFs), law enforcement agencies (LEAs) and financial intelligence units (FIUs) need innovative policing tools in the virtual sphere as well as skills, organisational and regulatory adaptations to counter these threats. TRACE will focus on input (forming initial suspicion), processing (substantiating suspicion, collecting evidence, locating suspects and their assets) and output (producing court proof / admissible e-evidence) to develop ICT-enabled solutions to identify, track and document IFFs, to pave the way for recovering the proceeds of crime and to disrupt the IFFs. TRACE will apply its solutions in use cases on terrorist financing, web forensics, cyber extortion, use of cryptocurrencies in property market transactions, money laundering in arts and antiquities, and online gambling, all of which have been developed in consultation with LEAs. TRACE will make recommendations on harmonisation of information formats in suspicious activity reports. Heretofore the differences and fragmented use of e-evidence in criminal justice processes have hindered cross-border investigations, prosecutions and convictions and recovery of assets. TRACE will create an open source platform for LEAs and for advancements in technology-based solutions in policing. With stakeholder engagement from the outset, the TRACE partners will co-develop advanced investigation tools and test and validate their efficacy in detecting IFFs. TRACE will also create a working group of partner LEAs and Stakeholder Board LEAs to discuss good practices in information sharing among EU LEAs. The project will create a Stakeholder Board of about 20 key stakeholders and an Ethics Advisory Board comprising four external ethics experts and two partners. TRACE has a multidisciplinary consortium comprising LEAs, AI technology companies, academia, research institutes and NGOs with track records of delivering cutting edge EU projects.