Transversal Bridge (TRANSRAD) is a two-year European Commission, Directorate General Home Affairs funded project addressing the emerging threat of transversal terrorist alliances for European nations and communities. TRANSRAD aims to detect and profile the emerging threat of transversal European radical groups and raise the awareness of institutional bodies and civil society at large on the risks potentially connected to these “radical bridges”. This project seeks to provide a new analytical grid to underpin the design of a strategic approach to counter these new and emerging threats.
TRANSRAD will undertake research to record counter-radicalisation case studies and identify the primary and secondary data required to subsequently produce threat assessments for new and emerging transversal threats. Research activity shall focus on movements involved in Southern European Member States with specific focus on Italy, Greece, Spain and Cyprus and their ties with radical movements in Northern and Western Europe. This research activity will study sources from academic literature, police interview reports, court proceedings, prison records, intelligence agency reports, government assessments and other open sources in order to build a richer picture throughout Member States with regard to the connections among the different groups, individuals and narratives.
Led by Agenfor Italalia, the TRANSRAD consortium includes Guardia Civil, Czech Technical University, European Institute in Bulgaria and the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy, providing a rich mix of practitioner and academic expertise. CENTRIC will inform the project by providing threat assessments from a UK perspective, captured from a series of interviews with experts from government and academia.
Aimed not simply at traditional stakeholders involved in identifying and countering radicalisation, TRANSRAD aims to produce video reportages, articles and working papers focused on delegitimizing terrorist and extremist narratives. These products will raise the awareness and understanding amongst a wider security stakeholder community of a wide community of security stakeholders regarding the nature of transversal threats and lay the foundations for the future development of a pan-EU strategy.