The Finnish Presidency of the Council of the EU is seeking a new negotiating mandate from Member States on the pooling of expertise in matters of cybersecurity. A new compromise text was submitted to them, which envisaged co-financing for the Horizon Europe programme. This text will be discussed on 15 October.
Difficult negotiations
The draft regulation establishing a European Cybersecurity Industrial, Technological and Research Competence Centre and a Network of National Coordination Centres was set out in September 2018 (see EUROPE 12095/18). Together with ePrivacy, it is one of the two Juncker Commission dossiers still on the table for co-legislators, despite two interinstitutional negotiating sessions in Spring 2019. The main difficulty surrounds the way in which a new European Competence Centre would be financed, with the EU Commission and European Parliament supporting co-financing, and the Council of the EU supporting voluntary financial participation (with some Member States fearing they would not benefit from it).
After having resumed negotiations conditional upon a study by the European Council's Legal Service and following clarifications from the Commission, Helsinki finally decided to relaunch the discussions (see EUROPE 12279/8). Last week, the Presidency organised an informal meeting between Member States, and it is preparing to hold a meeting of the Cybersecurity Group on 15 October, in the presence of Khalil Rouhana, Deputy Director-General of DG CONNECT, and Marina Zanchi, Head of Unit at DG Research.
A new Finnish compromise text
The compromise text being tabled with Member States, dated 10 October, opts for co-financing, or at least for joint actions under Horizon Europe. In a new recital 11c, it states that the Centre should be established as an EU body with legal personality. In addition, since the funding for operating the Centre would come solely from the Digital Europe and Horizon Europe programmes, "the Centre should be deemed a partnership for the purpose of budget implementation, including during the programming period”. In Article 21, it also refers to co-financing for joint actions related to Horizon Europe, stressing that "contributions paid by Member States for joint actions with the Union may take the form of financial or in-kind contributions". It sets out that Member States shall make financial contributions to the administrative costs of the Centre in proportion to their contributions to joint actions.
This new attempt, six months after the failure of the trilogues, should set the tone for further operations given that the European Parliament has already expressed its desire to resume negotiations (see EUROPE 12335/27).
Table 4 columns: http://bit.ly/2nIBgSL - New compromise text: http://bit.ly/2MG10aN (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)