CLOSEYE comes to life with the aim of providing the EU with an operational and technical framework that would increase situational awareness and improve the reaction capability of authorities surveying the external borders of the EU. This initiative also comes in response to an urgent sudden major challenge for the control of the migratory pressure from the North African coast and to a limited market providing innovative solutions for the accomplishment of major operational objectives.CLOSEYE articulates this POV through three phases encompassing the necessary activities to:• identify the problem and the alternatives• demonstrate that there are existing innovative solutions which provide the required additional capabilities• to assess the performance levels of these solutions• and to evaluate the experimentation results and promote their extensibility to future solutions.The CLOSEYE consortium has assembled the most representative public authorities in charge of the surveillance of the southern EU maritime border, ensuring not only a remarkable expertise at technical and operational level, but also a privileged positioning with respect to the main hot spots for maritime irregular cross-border activities and ensuring access to the existing surveillance systems and assets to support the validation process.The second pillar of the project will be the security industry, which will be called to demonstrate the efficiency and effectiveness of specific solutions in order to fulfill real user demands. The assessment of the performance levels of the solutions proposed by the industry will be conducted through a series of exercises, both technical and operational, in at least two different scenarios.By promoting this competitive testing and assessment of the potential solutions, CLOSEYE will pave the way towards the definition of future in integrated surveillance solutions from a fact-checked perspective, validated by users.