On Thursday 13 September, the European commissioner for the economy and digital society, Mariya Gabriel, briefed reporters on the proposals aimed at creating a network of centres of expertise on cyber-security in Europe, as well as on the creation of a European skills centre.
This was one of the measures unveiled on Wednesday as part of a broader package aimed at protecting European elections from any outside manipulation (see EUROPE 12094).
The commissioner said “Our ambition is to give the EU enhanced industrial and technological capacity and to allow it, in the future, to hold a leading position in new generation cyber-security solutions. It is our digital sovereignty that is at stake”.
According to the Commission, over 660 centres or entities in the EU already meet the conditions for joining this network and many of them have, moreover, already applied to join the Commission’s pilot project which will begin in November with a financial allocation of €50 million.
The new European centre of expertise – which, the proposal states, should be in Brussels – would be composed of around 80 people by 2023, the commissioner said. Its resources will come from the Digital Europe and the Horizon Europe research programmes. The Commission, moreover, proposes that member states should join the initiative and contribute to the centre’s overall budget with a view to reaching the sum of €4 billion.
It is essential for the European centre to be able to count on a “sound partnership with the private sector”, the commissioner said, indicating that the Commission was actively seeking investment from industry.
As of 2021, the European centre will finance research and innovation projects such as the development of new methods of encoding, the development of a secure communications network between member state authorities, or a universal database on software vulnerability accessible to researchers, she explained.
When asked about the EU’s degree of resilience to cyber threats, the Bulgarian commissioner acknowledged that the EU was still dependent to a certain extent on non-European suppliers, but that it did have expertise.
“Today, what is at stake is to transform that expertise and experience into marketable products and services, to have the EU able to cover the whole chain of cyber-security value”, she concluded. (Original version in French by Marion Fontana)