Discussions in the EU Council on the draft regulation on pooling cybersecurity expertise are proving to be quite complicated. Many delegations have condemned a convoluted arrangement to ensure the financing of the new industrial, technology, and research centre.
An opaque context and many unexpected developments
However, the EU Council had already established its negotiating position and had even held two rounds of discussions with the European Parliament on this legislative proposal, which envisages creating three new structures: a centre at the EU level, a network of centres at the member-state level, and a competence community at the stakeholder level (see EUROPE 12095/18). However, negotiations were interrupted on account of the European elections and, in particular, Member States’ rejection of the co-financing formula.
After making the resumption of negotiations conditional on a study by the EU Council’s Legal Service and subsequent clarifications by the Commission, the Finnish Presidency of the Council finally submitted a new compromise text to Member States in mid-October (see EUROPE 12348/15). However, this text—initially available on the EU Council’s portal under number 12069/19 REV2 and then withdrawn—is far from being unanimously accepted, as evidenced by the comments of 12 Member States consulted by Europe (France, Bulgaria, Denmark, Germany, Spain, Cyprus, Lithuania, Hungary, Poland, Slovenia, Malta, and Slovakia).
The relatively loquacious Member States
Member States’ comments focus on the centre’s legal form and work programme (recital 11), the definition of “joint actions” between the EU and Member States (Article 2.5), the centre’s tasks (Article 4a), the management board’s tasks (Article 13), and financial contributions (Article 21).
Overall, Member States are concerned about being subject to a co-financing obligation. Commenting on Article 21, Germany has thus reiterated its position that “financing by Member States must be on a voluntary basis (especially with regard to financial contributions)”. France has repeatedly pointed out that “co-financing is a red line for Member States”, while Lithuania has indicated that it “does not approve the proposal for mandatory co-financing by Member States by setting a minimum level of funding”. Denmark welcomes the opportunity to contribute “in kind” and emphasises that it does not support joint partnerships under the Digital Europe programme.
Slovakia summarises the debate by stating the following: “Slovakia perceives the modifications proposed by the Commission as an initiative aiming to clarify the issue of implementing the financing of Horizon Europe and Digital Europe. However, the proposed modifications have the opposite effect, and the proposed text is not clear. The Commission is introducing ‘new’ financing instruments, such as joint actions/partnerships, which were not in its original proposal”.
The experts in charge of this dossier met on Tuesday, 5 November, and further meetings are now planned for 7, 12, and 14 November. Table 4 columns: http://bit.ly/2nIBgSL and EU Council position as of 18 March 2019: http://bit.ly/32ePbhz (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)