Legislative Observatory
European Parliament
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Identification and designation of European critical infrastructures and assessment of the need to improve their protection

2006/0276(CNS)

This Commission staff working document sets out a new approach to the European Programme for Critical Infrastructure Protection (EPCIP) with a view to making them more secure. It builds on a comprehensive review of the 2006 European Programme for Critical Infrastructure Protection and the Council Directive 2008/114/EC, conducted in close cooperation with EU Member States and stakeholders.

The review process of the current EPCIP revealed that there has not been enough consideration of the links between critical infrastructures in different sectors, nor indeed across national boundaries.

In order to properly protect Europe’s critical infrastructures, and in order to build their resilience, a new approach to tackle this gap is needed. To pilot the new approach, the Commission will start by working with four critical infrastructures of European dimension: Eurocontrol, Galileo, the electricity transmission grid and the gas transmission network (the Four). It is expected that other relevant infrastructures could then benefit from the processes and tools developed when carrying out the work with the Four. Through work with the Four and developing the new approach, the EU can both play a supporting role for Member States in their own CI protection and resilience work and facilitate better cooperation on CI protection and resilience within the EU. Given that many critical infrastructures are privately owned, better cooperation includes supporting the development of private-public structured dialogues.

The first stage will be to work with the Four to ensure a comprehensive understanding of their CIP measures to date in each of the prevention, preparedness and response work streams, including looking at how interdependencies and cascading effects feed into their CIP planning. The next step will be to identify common factors and consider ways in which their CI protection and resilience measures can be improved.