Debate: EU Security Union Strategy
Date: WEDNESDAY, 16 DECEMBER 2020
Speaker: Margaritis Schinas
Language: EN

I welcome this resolution that we’re discussing today. The threats that we face today are many and varied, but they have something in common: they are fast moving, cross—border and cross—sectoral. Most of them work across borders, across national borders, across the distinction between online and offline and across the divide of internal and external security. All this points to the very simple fact that we need a joined—up European approach to cope with this evolving landscape of threats, and this is exactly what we did last July when we presented our new EU Security Union Strategy to be coherent and comprehensive, to break down the many barriers and many silos that stand in the way of the EU delivering security to citizens.  This strategy is our ambition for the coordinated work for the next five years, and we want it to be understood as a single roof underneath which we can build an edifice with individual rooms, that are now being constructed. These range from combating terrorism and organised crime to preventing and detecting hybrid threats, increasing the resilience of our critical infrastructure, promoting cybersecurity and fostering research and innovation. So I can only therefore welcome the opportunity that you give us through this resolution to be able to discuss our work in these areas.  Before I go into the design and implementation of the single roof, let me tell you how important we consider the issue and the place of fundamental rights in security policy. This is the touchstone for all our work and is indispensable as our common purpose. I do not see fundamental rights, being in charge of the Security Union, as an accessory or something that we have to visit ex post. I think that the issue of fundamental rights is a precondition before contemplating any security measures and there are ways to compromise and conciliate these two objectives, which are not as antithetical as some people want to make us believe. Let me now come to implementation. Implementation of the new Security Union started immediately on the day of its adoption, with a presentation on the agenda for the fight against drugs and action against firearms, that was also in the previous Commission. Last week we took another major step forward – the EU agenda on counter—terrorism following the heinous attacks in France and in Vienna. We want to strengthen the EU’s work to add value to Member States’ responsibilities, to anticipate, prevent, protect from and respond to terrorists. It sets out very concrete actions to help us do precisely that and we have also accompanied this proposal with another one for a reinforced mandate for Europol to be able to cope with these new types of threat. Europol, as you know, functions as police cooperation. With our proposal for a new mandate they can do much more.  Let me also welcome the – I would say historic – agreement reached last week on the regulation on terrorist content online. This is something that we need, and it was long overdue. Just three hours ago today, the Commission announced the strengthening of our cybersecurity strategy, which is most and foremost about security. Cybersecurity is not simply a consideration for a market, it’s not a consideration for businesses, it’s a consideration for society and the way we protect our people. The new cybersecurity strategy also includes two legislative proposals for the revision of our tools that need modernisation, like the Network and Information Systems Directive (NIS), and the critical infrastructure, the physical infrastructure. Both these proposals have been presented today. So there our idea is to reinforce and modernise anything that we can do to cope with cyber threats and cyber attacks.  Let me also highlight the importance of enforcement in all of this. For the first time, in the new NIS directive, we have specifically introduced the possibility for fines to facilitate enforcement and make sure that everybody plays by the rules. Last week, we also adopted a product which is very popular in this House – the progress report under the Security Union. This was the first progress report of this Commission and it shows that a lot has been done to support Member States in the past year. But we need to keep the momentum, and the citizens rightly expect not only pledges but also delivery.  There is much discussion and debate on whether this community EU action in the area of security is something that makes the European Union compete against our Member States. I think the Minister put it very right: we do not compete with anyone, we complement and produce added value to allow for the European Union to dissipate, organise and respond to these security threats.