Brussels, 09/02/2009 (Agence Europe) - At a conference on the critical infrastructures held in Brussels on Monday 2 February by Risk&Co, René-Pierre Koch (DG JLS) made a brief presentation of the state of play with work on the CIWIN (Critical Infrastructure Warning Information Network) proposed by the European Commission to speed up the circulation of information on the security of the critical infrastructure (it is worth noting that this refers to all infrastructures, the destruction or disturbance of which as the result of an accident, a criminal or terrorist act or war may endanger the populations or the functioning of society). The text of this proposed decision is still under examination within the Civil Protection group of the Council. Mr Koch explained that the CIWIN network will function first of all as a "forum for the exchange of information" between the member states on a secure network set in place under the responsibility of DG JLS of the Commission with the assistance of the Joint Research Centre. For the time being, a single point of access per member state is planned. He said he was confident the pilot project could be launched in May, for an initial period of 12 to 18 months. In its second stage, the network could focus on early warning.
However, this timetable has been described as highly optimistic by a diplomat, who commented that several member states retain serious misgivings and that the Czech Presidency has shown little interest in this dossier, unlike most other countries of Central and Eastern Europe, which hope to be able to benefit from this exchange of information. This network had been called for by the European Council of December 2004, but since then, many member states have lined up behind the ambiguous wording of the conclusions of the European Council to avoid moving forward. According to a source close to the dossier, this security-related subject is seen as particularly sensitive and is suffering from excessive partitioning between the various technical sectors involved at national level. Several member states have expressed concerns about including information on their nuclear infrastructure in this database. Others, amongst them Belgium and Germany, are opposed to creating an early-warning network, due to the risk of duplicate effort with mechanisms already in place. To recap, at this stage it is still not clear precisely which infrastructures would be covered (energy and transport infrastructure, which are covered by the directive of December 2008 on the inventory of critical European structures?), nor is the type of information which will be put online. It is worth noting that the dossier is being followed at the European Parliament (consultation only) by the committee on public liberties, which has appointed as its rapporteur Italian independent member Luca Romagnoli.
Once again, the conference highlighted problems encountered by infrastructure managers in their relationship with industry and the state and a number of concerns concerning the division of the work between national and European levels. General Guy Cachat (of the French gendarmerie) stressed the growing complexity of infrastructure and, above all, protection of the physical sites. Alain Juillet, a high-level official with responsibility for economic intelligence, on the other hand, took pains to stress the importance of improved protection for economic activity (there are 220,000 SMEs in France, some of them in sensitive sectors) and flows (of finances and information mainly). Although Jean-Louis Blanchou, director of safety and risk management for the airports of Paris, said that he was reassured to see that the European directive does not bring in a new layer of regulation, he also added that better mutual knowledge would help to reinforce trust and that this would have to start with the relationship between the infrastructure manager and the state. Genséric Cantournet (Telecom Italia) stressed the enormous disparity in the definition of critical infrastructures: military installations are included only in the Netherlands, postal services only in the United States, banking circuits and telecommunications everywhere, energy everywhere except Switzerland. He proposed a dynamic approach to infrastructure security, based on the product or service and targeting the process rather than protection of physical infrastructure. (O.J./trans.fl)