THE EUROPEAN – SECURITY AND DEFENCE UNION
Cyber defence in the European Union is part of its defence capabilities Cyber strongly influences any kind of capability development
by Wolfgang Röhrig, Head of Unit Information Superiority, European Defence Agency, Brussels
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oday, cyber space is recognised as a domain of military operations, which is, per se, of cross-cutting nature. Thus, cyber strongly influences any kind of capability development. Before tackling cyber defence, let’s have a look at the strategic defence context in Europe.
The strategic context of European defence First, some facts and figures on European defence: the defence expenditures of EU Member States in 20161 added up to about 208 billion euros. In terms of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the estimated average figure was about 1.4%. In 2016, the collaborative spending on equipment purchases reached 6,3 billion and the collaborative expenditure on research and technology was about 143 million euros. This means only a small portion of about 3.1% of the overall expenditure was spent collaboratively. These figures illustrate the need for defence to be better organised at a European level. We need more debate on the better implementation of defence cooperation. European defence needs interoperable capabilities incorporating innovative solutions – technologies that are not fielded in defence until now and that are increasingly important, like artificial intelligence or nanotechnology. These will dramatically change defence capabilities, and Europe shall not stay behind. European defence has gained new momentum, especially with the implementation of the European Union’s Global Strategy
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published in 2016. Since then, several new EU instruments have been launched to support the development of new and innovative military capabilities – including cyberdefence – such as the Coordinated Annual Review of Defence (CARD), the Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) and the European Defence Fund (EDF). Furthermore, the upcoming new European Commission will set up a specific Directorate General for “Defence Industry & Space”. Taking into account the currently fragmented European defence sector, the goal must be to make the European defence landscape more coherent. This requires more than just asking Member States to spend 2% of their GDP on defence.
Coherent approach from priorities to impact To that end, there is a need for the integration of joint priorities for the development of European capabilities as they were agreed in the Capability Development Plan (CDP), the latest version of which was approved by the EDA Steering Board in June 2018. The CDP addresses the security and defence challenges from a European perspective, looking at the future operational environment and defining the capability needs agreed by the Member States, reflecting the contributions of the Military Committee and the European Union Military Staff. The CDP sets a total of 11 priorities, and among them is “Enabling capabilities for cyber responsive operations”. These priorities represent the main orientation for the development of capabilities in a collaborative way in Europe. Avenues of approach for their coherent implementation have been agreed in the related Strategic Context Cases (SCC) in June 2019.
