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12 Oct, 2021

Time to strengthen the resilience of EU critical infrastructure

On 12 October, the European Parliament Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs adopted a legislative report, negotiated under the leadership of Michal Šimečka MEP (Progresívne Slovensko, SK), to better protect EU critical infrastructure from disruptive incidents such as natural disasters, terrorism and public health emergencies.

The report, which comes following the European Commission's proposal for a new directive on the Resilience of Critical Entities, seeks to further develop the existing legal instrument and significantly widen its scope of application. Renew Europe sees this as imperative in order to guarantee that crucial infrastructure, such as public administration, transport, energy and the supply of drinking water, stands robust and resilient against physical threats.

To avoid divergent application of the Directive and to improve the functioning of the internal market, it will contain a common list of essential services, to be drawn up by the European Commission in cooperation with EU Member States.

Šimečka, Vice-President of Renew Europe and rapporteur for the report on Resilience of Critical Entities, said:

"Critical entities provide essential services across the EU while facing a growing number of both man-made and natural threats. The ambition of this report is to strengthen Member States’ ability to cope with risks to their operations while improving the functioning of the internal market in essential services. To deliver on a Europe that protects, it also means bolstering the collective resilience of the critical systems underpinning our way of life.”

The new rules under the Resilience of Critical Entities legislation would ensure the functioning of European societies by helping EU Member States to prevent, resist and recover from disruptive incidents.

Photo credit: Jan Van De Vel, European Parliament 2021.

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