On Thursday 18 October, the EU heads of state and/or government called for the fight against cyber attacks to be strengthened, including through sanctions.
“We need to strengthen our resilience and our resolve especially when it comes to cyber security. The latest cyber attack against the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in The Hague demonstrated that we are facing evolving threats”, the president of the European Council, Donald Tusk, states in his letter of invitation. The Netherlands revealed that, in April this year, the offices of the OPCW had been targeted by a hostile cyber operation conducted by the Russian military intelligence service, an attack that the European Council is expected to condemn in its conclusions.
Thus, according to draft conclusions dated 15 October, the leaders should request that “measures be taken to combat illegal and malicious activity online (...) and to strengthen cyber security”. They want work to be continued on the EU’s capability to “react to cyber attacks and to discourage such attacks through restrictive measures, in line with the conclusions of the Foreign Affairs Council on 19 June 2017”. During that Council, the ministers had approved the setting in place of a framework for a joint European diplomatic response to malicious cyber activity, stressing that the EU “will make full use of the measures relating to common foreign and security policy including, where necessary, restrictive measures” against persons and entities responsible for cyber attacks (see EUROPE 11811). This idea was also mooted in recent days in a joint letter from the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland, Denmark and Romania.
In its conclusions, the European Council is also expected to call for the negotiations to be held on all proposals relating to cyber security to be concluded by the end of the legislature.
The EU wants to strengthen its resilience and its capability to combat hybrid, chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) threats. The European Council should welcome, as the foreign ministers did on 15 October, the adoption of the new restrictive measures scheme aimed at facing up to the threat posed by chemical weapons, in the hope that “progress will be swiftly made concerning inclusion on the list of persons and entities concerned”.
The attack in Salisbury and that on the OPCW “strengthen our common determination to further consolidate the EU’s internal security and our ability to detect, prevent and disrupt hostile activity from foreign intelligence networks on our territories, as well as online, and to react”, the leaders warn, according to the draft conclusions.
Although everyone thinks of Russia, a European source refused to point a finger of blame at Moscow. “It is not a matter of being against Russia but of having instruments to respond to attacks in the future”, a European source explained. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)