COI S&D Deputy Director Josef Schroefl participated as a panelist in the Cyber PESCO (Permanent Structured Cooperation) Projects Conference: ‘The EU Cyber Resilience Challenge – a Joint PESCO Cooperative Approach’. The conference, hosted by the Portuguese MoD with the support of the European Defence Agency, took place in Lisbon from 24 to 25 May, 2022.
PESCO is a part of the European Union’s security and defence policy, in which 25 of the 27 national armed forces pursue structural integration. The key difference between PESCO and other forms of cooperation is the legally binding nature of the commitments undertaken by the 25 member states that participate in PESCO.
Mr Schroefl took part in the panel ‘EU-NATO cooperation in the cyber domain (strategy and reality)’, where he highlighted the fact that cyber is the main enabler of hybrid threats, and can only be countered with more EU-NATO cooperation. He also briefed on Hybrid CoE’s ‘Cyber power in hybrid conflict and warfare (CPH)’ workstrand, the main objective of which is to raise awareness of, identify and address relevant strategic questions regarding the cyber domain in the context of hybrid conflict. The workstrand’s flagship project is the annual CPH Symposium every autumn.
The conclusion drawn from the event was that the EU and NATO have already established a good basis for countering cyber and hybrid threats, but there is still room for improvement. Situational awareness and effective communication between the organizations must be enhanced to face the current challenges in the information and cyber domains.
