European Commission proposes critical infrastructure blueprint

The European Commission has proposed a Critical Infrastructure Blueprint, designed to enhance the EU's coordination in response to disruptive attempts on critical infrastructure, including that of energy.

The Commission cites current geopolitical issues threatening critical infrastructure, such as the war in Ukraine, increased hybrid attacks, and the sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines as highly volatile.

The Blueprint provides a roadmap with measures that can be applied when member states are faced with significant critical infrastructure incidents, aiming to improve shared situational awareness, ensure coordinated public communication and provide effective responses from member states and relevant stakeholders.

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The Blueprint can be applied when:

(i) The incident has a significant disruptive effect to or in six or more member states;

(ii) The incident has a significant disruptive effect in two or more member states and timely policy coordination in the response at Union level is required, due to significant impact on technical or political systems

To respond to such an incident, the Blueprint sets out several actions that can be taken at EU level, such as the support of the affected Member States through information exchange, the organisation of expert meetings, the preparation of situational awareness reports and the coordination of public communication lines and of the response.

The EU has already taken measures to strengthen the protection of infrastructure to prevent or mitigate the effects of disruptions in essential services.

Following the sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines, the Commission proposed a Council Recommendation to expedite work on protecting critical infrastructure, with a focus on enhancing coordination in response to incidents and crises through the Critical Infrastructure Blueprint.

Earlier this year, the critical infrastructure legal and policy framework was updated with the directive on critical entities resilience (CER Directive), entailing member states to adopt national legislation and strengthen the resilience of critical entities across 11 sectors, one such being energy.