The Commission proposed on Tuesday 18 October, in an EU Council recommendation, to strengthen the resilience of the EU’s critical infrastructure, following up on announcements made on 5 October by Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
The proposal for a recommendation comes a few weeks after the sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines and while the “war in Ukraine has brought new risks, physical attacks and cyber attacks, often combined as a hybrid threat”, the Commission explains.
The recent episode of another sabotage on German rails also showed that the “risks of attacks are very high”, commented EU Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson in Strasbourg.
The Commissioner welcomed the fact that the EU has recently revised its legislative framework in this area with the Directive on the resilience of critical infrastructure (‘CER Directive’) and the revised Directive on the security of network and information systems (‘NIS2’) but the recommendation envisages better coordination between these two instruments and Member States’ actions.
The measures provided for in this recommendation are thus mainly intended to complement the new CER and NIS2 Directives, by anticipating and supplementing the measures that these new Directives provide for, the recommendation explains.
The aim is to “maximise and accelerate work on critical infrastructure protection in three priority areas: preparedness, response and international cooperation”, says the Commission.
Given the existing threats, priority should be given to measures to build resilience in the key sectors of energy, digital infrastructure, transport and space, the recommendation says.
In particular, the Commission encourages Member States to conduct stress tests of entities operating critical infrastructure “on the basis of a common set of principles developed at EU level”.
A ‘master plan’ on critical infrastructure incidents and crises will be developed at EU level and will describe and outline the objectives and modes of cooperation between Member States and EU institutions, bodies, offices and agencies in responding to critical infrastructure incidents, the Commission adds.
With regard to national critical infrastructure, “given the possible consequences if the risks materialise, priority should be given to improving the resilience of entities operating critical infrastructure”.
The draft recommendation further aims to strengthen the early warning and response capacity to critical infrastructure disruptions through the Union Civil Protection Mechanism. The Commission will thus regularly review “the adequacy and readiness of the existing response capacity and organise cross-sectoral cooperation tests at EU level”.
Member States should also develop the use of Galileo and/or Copernicus for monitoring and share relevant information within an expert group, the recommendation says.
As regards enhanced cooperation with key partners and neighbouring countries on critical infrastructure resilience, the Commission and the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy will strengthen work with NATO through the EU-NATO structured dialogue on resilience. They will set up a task force for this purpose.
Link to the recommendation: https://aeur.eu/f/3o3 (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)