On Friday 5 June, EU telecommunications ministers emphasised the importance of investing in digital infrastructure, the crucial importance of which was demonstrated during the Covid-19 crisis. They also welcomed the agreement reached on Wednesday 3 June at ambassador level regarding the Competence Centre.
Because of the coronavirus, the meeting, which was due to take place in Luxembourg, was held as an informal videoconference. It was therefore restricted to a simple discussion on lessons to be learned from the crisis and future priorities.
The legislative work had been carried out upstream, with the ambassadors giving the green light to a renewed negotiating mandate for the draft regulation establishing a Cybersecurity Competence Centre (see EUROPE 12437/4). This is the second time that Member States have adopted a negotiating mandate on this text. A year ago, they adopted a text before interrupting negotiations with Parliament in order to clarify how the new structure would be funded (the current version clarifies that co-financing is not compulsory and that a Member State may decide, for a particular year or a specific area, not to participate). However, the contentious issues - where the Centre’s headquarters will be located and the voting arrangements - have still not been resolved.
Handful of countries interested in the planned Centre’s headquarters
In his speech, Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton welcomed this latest outcome in the Council of the EU. But he issued a thinly veiled warning to Member States: “The decision on the location will be part of the negotiations. However, there will be one essential criterion: it would be inconceivable for a cybercentre of this kind to operate in an environment that is not totally secure, particularly with regard to the telecommunications operators it will need to rely on, including of course when it will be using 5G secure networks”.
This was a thinly veiled message to countries that do not strictly apply the European toolbox that recommends a multi-vendor approach that excludes the Chinese company Huawei from strategic locations (see EUROPE 12414/7) or very late in the deployment of 5G. According to information we have received, four Member States are officially in the running to host the new centre: Romania, Spain, Luxembourg and Belgium. Greece, Poland, Portugal and Italy were also very interested.
Progress report and conclusions
Ministers also took note of the progress report prepared by the Croatian Presidency on the Regulation on the confidentiality of electronic communications. This document stresses that negotiations had to be interrupted because of the coronavirus, after Zagreb proposed including a new legal basis - that of legitimate interest - to allow the processing of metadata (Article 6b) and the use of storage and processing capacities in devices (Article 8).
Due to the informal format of the meeting, the Croatian Presidency was unable to submit its conclusions, entitled ‘Shaping Europe's Digital Future’, for adoption. It welcomed the support obtained in the Committee of Permanent Representatives and indicated that adoption would take place by written procedure in the next few days.
Mobile tracking applications
The Commission took the opportunity offered by this meeting to inform Ministers of the ongoing work on technical specifications for the interoperability of tracking applications.
The speech was not open to the public, but a spokesperson for the Commission indicated that the discussions were taking place as part of the ‘Health Online’ network, which brings together experts in health and digital issues. “We played a coordinating role. We're not going to interfere with any applications that are developed and change the code or say they can’t be used. It is up to the application developers to ensure they are interoperable”, said another spokesman, noting that the Commission had published a number of guidelines in this regard (see EUROPE 12486/8).
To read the e-privacy progress report, go to: https://bit.ly/30abkQK (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)