ABSTRACT
Cybersecurity is one of the greatest areas of policy prioritization for the European Union (EU). Time and again, the statements of EU officials and the language of major policy documentation has emphasized the degree to which networks and network-enabled critical infrastructures constitute the foundation of the Union’s economic and political processes. This chapter describes the state of cyber affairs within the European Union and contextualizes the nature of challenges to ensuring coherence in approach that, even given recent developments that streamline and centralize approaches to cybersecurity, appear likely to persist in years to come. After offering a perspective on the history of cyber threats to the supranational security and prosperity of the European experiment, it details the development of strategy, institutions, and major cybersecurity initiatives over the past decade, culminating in the EU Cybersecurity Act in 2019 that overhauled Europe’s cybersecurity agencies and granted a more concrete mandate for defense, development and standardization to the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity.
