On Wednesday 28 July, Ireland signed the EuroQCI—European Quantum Communication infrastructure initiative—declaration, which should lead to the development of an EU-wide quantum communication infrastructure. This will be used to secure communications between critical infrastructure and the EU institutions.
With this signature, Ireland joins the other 26 EU Member States that have already committed to working with the European Commission and the European Space Agency (ESA) to build the EuroQCI.
“I am very happy to see all EU Member States come together to sign the EuroQCI declaration [which is] a very solid basis for Europe’s plans to become a major player in quantum communications. As such, I encourage them all to be ambitious in their activities”, said Executive Vice-President for a Digital Europe Margrethe Vestager.
“As we have recently seen, cybersecurity is more than ever a crucial component of our digital sovereignty”, added Commissioner for the Internal Market Thierry Breton.
The EuroQCI, which will consist of a terrestrial segment based on fibre communication networks and a space segment based on satellites, should be operational by 2027.
The development of national and cross-border quantum networks will be supported in the coming years by the Digital Europe programme and the Connecting Europe Facility. (Original version in French by Thomas Mangin)