European Critical Infrastructure Protection

The recent European Council Directive 114/08 requested the EU Member States to perform an assessment aimed at the identification and designation of the so-called European Critical Infrastructures (ECI). Every analysis of the results of the "first round" of identifications and designations has only taken into account the numbers of ECIs effectively designated, consequently leaving aside all of the other elements related to this important path towards a harmonized vision of the "European Security". This work, with its unprecedented approach, focuses on the elements that have maximized or frustrated the ambitious European objectives and on the issues that might have prevented the directive reaching its full potential. Furthermore, the study offers an in-depth perspective on the lessons learned - including those that can be learned from the US pre-post 9/11 CIP policies - as well as an assessment of the state of play of the Member States after the implementation of the directive, together with predictions for future challenges.

External Dimension of the European Union’s Critical Infrastructure Protection Programme: From Neighboring Frameworks to Transatlantic Cooperation provides the basis, methodological framework, and first comprehensive analysis of the current state of the external dimension European Programme for Critical Infrastructure Protection. The challenges at the EU level are multidimension insofar as identifying, designating and protecting critical infrastructures with the ultimate goal of harmonizing different national policies of the Member States and creating the identity of the European Union in this arena. Modern society has become so reliant on various sectors of critical infrastructure—energy, telecommunications, transport, finance, ICT, and public services—that any disruption may lead to serious failures that impact individuals, society, and the economy. The importance of critical infrastructures grows with the industrial development of global and national communities; their interdependence and resiliency is increasingly important given security threats including terrorism, natural disaster, climate change and pandemic outbreak In the area of Critical Infrastructure Protection and Resilience, the European Union is constantly committed to setting the objectives for the Member States. At the same time, the European Commission promotes the importance of a common approach to Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP), and ensure cooperation beyond the borders of the Union, while also cooperating with neighboring countries, including those soon willing to join the European Union. This book has been structured and written to contribute to current critical infrastructures, resilience policy development and discussions about regional and international cooperation. It serves as a reference for those countries willing to initiate cooperation and that therefore demand deeper knowledge on the security cultures and frameworks of their potential partners. Features: Provides an unprecedented analysis of the national frameworks of 14 neighboring countries of the EU, plus the United States and Canada Overcomes the language barriers to provide an overall picture of the state of play of the countries considered Outlines the shaping of national critical infrastructure protection frameworks to understanding the importance of service stability and continuity Presents guidelines to building a comprehensive and flexible normative framework Addresses the strategic and operational importance of international co-operation on critical infrastructure including efforts in CIP education and training Provides insight to institutions and decision-makers on existing policies and ways to improve the European security agenda The book explains and advocates for establishing stronger, more resilient systems to preserve functionalities at the local, national, and international levels. Security, industry, and policy experts—both practitioners and policy decision-makers—looking for answers will find the solutions they seek within this book.

Seminar paper from the year 2023 in the subject Politics - Topic: European Union, grade: 1,0, University of applied Sciences Regensburg (Angewandte Natur- und Kulturwissenschaften), course: European Politics and Institutions, language: English, abstract: Critical infrastructures are essential for the smooth functioning of highly developed societies, providing crucial services that society heavily relies upon. However, their interconnected and complex nature makes them susceptible to failures and disruptions. The paper analyzes the events and actors that led to the adoption of the European Resilience of Critical EntitiesDirective (RCED) in 2022, which signifies a shift from a "protection" to a "resilience" approach in European legislation. Using the policy cycle framework, the paper examines the initial agenda setting, evaluation of the European Critical Infrastructure Directive (ECID), and the problem definition and agenda setting for the RCED. The evaluation of the ECID reveals implementation weaknesses and emphasizes the need for a more coordinated and comprehensive approach to critical infrastructure protection. Stakeholder consultations and evaluations highlight the importance of updating the ECID to address the interdependencies of critical infrastructures. The European Commission proposes policy options, with a preference for enhancing the resilience of critical entities and ensuring the uninterrupted provision of essential services. However, the concept of resilience in EU legislation needs further clarification. Overall, this paper provides insights into the necessity of critical infrastructure protection and the shift towards a resilience-oriented approach in European legislation.

This collection of papers examines a variety of areas and issues related to, or raised by, the EU Internal Security Strategy. It covers such matters as critical infrastructure protection and environmental crime, from a range of disciplinary perspectives, including law, geography and politics. The EU Internal Security Strategy is becoming increasingly complex as it develops over time, as it has to operate against the background of growing diversity in law enforcement systems across EU member states. It is clear that the EU Internal Security Strategy is, and will continue to be for a long time, a work in progress, not only in its aim to address traditional transnational security threats, but also in reacting to emerging concerns, either in new crime areas or issues arising from the implementation of earlier phases of the strategy. This will be a subject matter for many academic discipline areas for some time to come.

The present volume aims to provide an overview of the current understanding of the so-called Critical Infrastructure (CI), and particularly the Critical Information Infrastructure (CII), which not only forms one of the constituent sectors of the overall CI, but also is unique in providing an element of interconnection between sectors as well as often also intra-sectoral control mechanisms. The 14 papers of this book present a collection of pieces of scientific work in the areas of critical infrastructure protection. In combining elementary concepts and models with policy-related issues on one hand and placing an emphasis on the timely area of control systems, the book aims to highlight some of the key issues facing the research community.

Europe witnessed in the last years a number of significant power contingencies. Some of them revealed the potentiality of vast impact on the welfare of society and triggered pressing questions on the reliability of electric power systems. Society has incorporated electricity as an inherent component, indispensable for achieving the expected level of quality of life. Therefore, any impingement on the continuity of the electricity service would be able to distress society as a whole, affecting individuals, social and economic activities, other infrastructures and essential government functions. It would be possible to hypothesize that in extreme situations this could even upset national security. This book explores the potential risks and vulnerabilities of the European electricity infrastructure, other infrastructures and our society as whole increasingly depend on. The work was initiated by the need to verify the potential effects of the ongoing market and technical transformation of the infrastructure, which is fundamentally changing its operation and performance. The final aim is to set the basis for an appropriate industrial and political European-wide response to the risk challenges.

Recent debates in security policy have highlighted trends towards fragmentation, informalisation and privatisation in the diverse field of security policy, with its increasingly transnational security risks. In this context, the concept of security governance has risen to prominence and has inspired much valuable research. Yet, there are not only very different conceptual understandings of security governance; there is also a lack of clarity regarding its empirical manifestations and normative connotations. After a decade of research, this book therefore puts security governance to the test and scrutinises its analytical and political pitfalls and potentials. It reviews the concept of security governance and identifies central conceptual, empirical and normative challenges that need to be addressed. Moreover, this book scrutinises critical examples of security governance from EU security policy as well as in a comparative regional perspective. Case studies include EU efforts to counter piracy off the coast of Somalia, combat terrorism inside European societies and protect critical infrastructures. This book was originally published as a special issue of European Security.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the Third International Workshop on Critical Information Infrastructures Security, CRITIS 2008, held in Rome, Italy, in October 2008. The 39 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 70 submissions. All the contributions highlight the current development in the field of Critical (Information) Infrastructures and their Protection. Specifically they emphasized that the efforts dedicated to this topic are beginning to provide some concrete results. Some papers illustrated interesting and innovative solutions devoted to understanding, analyzing and modeling a scenario composed by several heterogeneous and interdependent infrastructures. Furthermore, issues concerning crisis management scenarios for interdependent infrastructures have been illustrated. Encouraging preliminarily results have been presented about the development of new technological solutions addressing self-healing capabilities of infrastructures, that is regarded as one of the most promising research topics to improve the infrastructures’ resilience.