Interinstitutional negotiations on the draft Regulation establishing a Cybersecurity Competence Centre will continue after the summer break. Although the EU Council reached agreement on the voting modalities of the Governing Board on 22 July, this issue, like others, is still the subject of disagreement between the European Parliament and the Member States.
Trilogues, again
As a reminder, this draft Regulation presented in 2018 provides for the creation of a Centre for the pooling of investment in research, technology and industrial development in the field of cybersecurity and for financial support under the Horizon Europe and Digital Europe programmes (see EUROPE 12095/18, 12437/4).
After an interruption in 2019, interinstitutional negotiations resumed on 25 June 2020 on the basis of a renewed mandate from the Council of the EU (see EUROPE 12226/16, 12393/17, 12511/34). Since then, a total of two meetings have been held, the last one on 15 July.
A third is planned for the second half of September, while the German Presidency of the Council indicates in its provisional timetable that it is aiming for political validation of the text at the Telecommunications Council meeting on 7 December.
The real issues of the negotiations
According to our information, the co-legislators would have agreed at the second trilogue to make the starting point the EU Council’s proposal on the Centre’s missions, objectives and tasks (Articles 3, 4 and 4a).
However, the real issues - the headquarters of the Centre and the voting procedures of the Governing Board - have not yet been really addressed. Until recently, Member States had in fact left these issues aside due to a lack of consensus among them.
Governing Board. On 22 July, the Committee of Permanent Representatives reached a common position on the voting modalities of the Board, composed of representatives of the Member States and a representative of the Commission. While some Member States wanted to remove this possibility altogether, the agreement reached by the Ambassadors allows the European Commission to oppose a decision of the Governing Board if it considers the decision illegal. However, the Commission’s right of veto is largely limited, as it is obliged to justify its arguments in writing.
Headquarters. Highly political, the question of the location of the headquarters of the future Centre is still pending in the EU Council, with several Member States having views on the matter (including Belgium, Luxembourg, Spain, Romania, Poland, Italy, Greece and, more discreetly, Portugal). The EU Council does not wish to enter into negotiations with Parliament on this issue. According to our information, this position should be linked to the case brought by MEPs before the Court of Justice of the EU concerning the headquarters of the European Labour Authority (ELA). In this case (C-743/19), Parliament contests the fact that it was not involved in the choice of the headquarters of the ELA, now located in Bratislava (Slovakia). In order to ensure a certain consistency with its line of defence in this matter, the EU Council would therefore have chosen to exclude any negotiations with Parliament on the headquarters of the Competence Centre.
Other issues. In addition to the voting rules and the headquarters, Parliament might also view poorly the fact that the EU Council has excluded operational tasks from the Centre’s mandate or that it has simply abolished the Industrial and Scientific Advisory Committee. See the Board’s mandate: https://bit.ly/2X7aL8e (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)