Cybersecurity Regulation in the European Union: The Digital, the Critical and Fundamental Rights

This chapter provides an overview of the European Union (EU) policies and legislative measures developed in an attempt to regulate cybersecurity. By invoking a historical perspective, policy developments that have shaped the cybersecurity landscape of the EU are highlighted. More concretely, this contribution investigates how the EU has been delimiting and constructing its cybersecurity policies in relation to different and sometimes opposing objectives, and questions what such choices reveal about (and how they determine) the evolution of the EU’s cybersecurity policy and its legal contours. For this purpose, the major steps in the evolution of the EU’s agenda on cybersecurity are analysed, ranging from the adoption of the 2013 Cybersecurity Strategy to other numerous norms, initiatives and sectorial frameworks that tackle issues arising from the active use of information systems and networks. The chapter reviews the mobilisation of multiple areas (such as the regulation of electronic communications, critical infrastructures and cybercrime) in the name of cybersecurity imperatives, and explores how the operationalisation of such imperatives surfaced in the EU cybersecurity strategy published in September 2017. The chapter suggests that one of the key challenges of cybersecurity regulation is to impose the right obligations on the right actors, through the right instrument. Reflecting on issues surrounding the current liability framework dating from the 80s, it considers how principles such as data protection by design and default as well as the ‘duty of care’ have emerged. Finally, the chapter considers how the perception of cybersecurity’s relationship with (national) security plays a determinant role in the current EU legislative and policy debates, where fundamental rights considerations, despite being acknowledged in numerous policy documents, are only considered in a limited manner.

ISBN:978-3-030-29052-8

Toegankelijkheid:Open