On Monday 22 March, the Council of the EU adopted the conclusions on the EU’s Cybersecurity Strategy for the Digital Decade, which recognise the crucial importance of a global, open, free and secure cyberspace.
The text calls for horizontal legislation to address all relevant aspects of cybersecurity involving connected devices, such as availability, integrity and confidentiality (see EUROPE 12670/15, 12649/16).
The Council of the EU also welcomed the proposal on a Joint Cyber Unit the European Commission is due to present in the next few weeks. The EU-27 state that the proposal will need to “provide clear focus and streamline the European cybersecurity crisis management framework, including through preparedness, shared situational awareness, reinforcing coordinated response and exercises, in a transparent and incremental manner”. According to the speech that Vice-President Margarítis Schinás gave on 18 March, the Commission’s proposal will take the form of a recommendation.
There are significant cybersecurity concerns with regard to 5G, and so the EU-27 believe that the next steps should be to define a long-term and comprehensive approach looking at the entire 5G value chain and ecosystem. These conclusions follow a communication from the European Commission that was presented on 16 December (see EUROPE 12624/1).
The conclusions can be found at: https://bit.ly/3f4G1yy (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)