EU unveils $1.2 billion cybersecurity plan

The European Union’s executive branch has unveiled its $1.2 billion cybersecurity plan to counter threats. The proposal comes at a time of increasing concerns following high-profile hacking incidents.

The European Commission on Tuesday presented a $1.2 billion plan to tackle cybersecurity threats, citing concerns over high-profile hacking incidents as well as the growing cyber warfare in Russia’s war in Ukraine.

“The EU Cyber Solidarity Act will strengthen solidarity at the Union level to better detect, prepare for, and respond to significant or large-scale cybersecurity incidents by creating a European Cybersecurity Shield and a comprehensive Cyber Emergency Mechanism,” the European Commission said in a statement.

The EU Cybersecurity Shield will comprise national and cross-border Security Operations Centers that will use state-of-the-art technology, including artificial intelligence and advanced data analytics, to detect cross-border cyber threats and incidents. The Cyber Emergency Mechanism will test entities in critical sectors, including healthcare, transport, and energy, for possible vulnerabilities.

The plan by the EU executive also includes establishing an EU Cybersecurity Reserve that includes incident response services that can intervene upon request of an EU country or institution in case of a major or large-scale cybersecurity incident. The plan proposed by the EU executive will need the approval of EU countries and the European Parliament before it can become law.

Meanwhile, the European Parliament has approved the sweeping reforms to the bloc’s climate policy that would make climate goals more ambitious. The reforms include upgrading the EU’s carbon market, which is set to raise the cost of pollution in Europe.

Parliament voted to approve the sweeping reforms with a large majority, following the deal brokered in 2022 by negotiators from the EU parliament and EU countries to reform the carbon market in an effort to cut down emissions by 62 percent from 2005 levels by 2030.

As part of the upgrade, factories will lose the free CO2 permits they currently receive by 2034, and shipping emissions will be added to the CO2 market by 2024. The EU parliament also voted in favor of the bloc’s first-world plan to phase in a levy on imports of high-carbon goods from 2026. This includes imports of steel, cement, aluminum, fertilizers, electricity, and hydrogen.