The French Presidency of the Council of the EU suggested to the Member States on Thursday 7 April that they appoint the Horizontal Working Party on Cyber Issues to examine the European Court of Auditors’ report on the preparedness of the European institutions to deal with cybersecurity threats.
The document sent to the Member States also calls for the participation of the EU Court of Auditors in the meeting of the working group charged with taking the matter forward.
As a reminder, the Court of Auditors published a special report on 29 March this year in which it pointed out the inadequate preparation of the EU bodies, agencies and institutions (EUIBAs) to respond to cyber threats (see EUROPE 12921/15).
The report highlights, among other things, that there are wide disparities in the level of preparedness of the different institutions and warns that the interconnection of the different entities could lead to a ‘domino’ effect in the event of an attack.
In addition, the report makes a number of recommendations, including strengthening the role of the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) and the Computer Emergency Response Team of the EUIBAs (CERT-EU), and calls for more resources to be devoted to this issue. Furthermore, the paper also calls for a legislative proposal from the Commission to establish common binding rules.
See the EU Court of Auditors’ report: https://aeur.eu/f/10w (Original version in French by Thomas Mangin)