On Wednesday 10 July, the ambassadors of the Twenty-Eight Member States to the EU approved the creation of a 'Horizontal Working Party on Enhancing Resilience and Countering Hybrid Threats'.
According to a EU Council document obtained by EUROPE, this Working Party, proposed by the trio of Presidencies of the Romania-Finland-Croatia EU Council, will work on combating hybrid threats, strengthening the resilience of the State and society, improving strategic communication and combating disinformation.
Thus, the Working Party should support, in particular, a comprehensive and coherent approach in the fight against hybrid threats and disinformation, "specifically on the detection, prevention, preparedness, resilience, response, information exchange and best practices". To this end, the Party's work will contribute to "a common understanding of hybrid threats in the EU and cooperation on common situational awareness and assessment of hybrid threats in their various and evolving forms".
Work on disinformation will be an important activity of the Working Party. It will promote a better common understanding of this phenomenon, "including components of hybrid threats", share best practices and assess options to promote strategic communication and resilience to disinformation stories and related activities. The Working Party will contribute to awareness-raising activities on the "harmful" effects of disinformation and attempts to manipulate information and contribute to the development of EU policies to strengthen expertise in this area, including media skills, in the EU and in the neighbouring areas of the EU.
Another mission will be to exchange information and assess cooperation with online platforms, media and technology companies to combat disinformation and promote corresponding societal resilience. Cooperation and facilitation of coordination to ensure free and fair elections and contribution to the evaluation of the EU coordination mechanisms put in place to combat disinformation and ensure free and fair elections are also part of its remit.
The Working Party should facilitate the coordinated and continuous horizontal implementation of actions taken by the EU and its Member States and support the work of EU Council bodies dealing with relevant international and regional actors. It will also ensure the liaison with the EU Intelligence and Situation Centre and act as the EU Council's "focal point" for cooperation with the European Centre of Excellence for Combating Hybrid Threats. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)