The European Cybersecurity Competence Centre (ECCC) will ensure the functioning of the EU-wide Cyber Shield, Roberto Viola, Director-General of the European Commission's department for Communications Networks, Content and Technology (DG CNECT), said on Tuesday at the Politehnica University in Bucharest.

The European official attended the launching ceremony of the European Cybersecurity Competence Centre in Romania.

Today we celebrate Europe Day and this is indeed an ideal celebration, the ideal moment to mark the establishment of the European Competence Centre. It has been a long journey, inaugurated more than four years ago during Romania's Presidency of the Council of the European Union, said Viola.

According to him it was no coincidence that the centre is in Bucharest, as the Romanian capital won the competition against five other European cities that wanted to host such a centre.

The EU official also said that Europe is becoming increasingly digitised, and there are risks and benefits during this process.

The risk is that opponents of democracy will attack the foundations of democracy and the way of life of citizens and of Europe. That is why a primary objective for Europe is to remain strong in this area of cyber security. We can only be strong by acting together. (...) Attackers always look for the weakest link. We are always trying to identify the weak points. (...) You cannot say that one part of Europe is better protected than another, one part is more important than another. The whole of Europe must be protected to the same extent, with the same intensity. (...) The Centre has a very important task, to strengthen cyber security competence across Europe and also to become fully operational, Viola said.

He recalled that Russia's aggression in Ukraine has raised both general security and cybersecurity issues in particular.

The feeling of instability that we are facing raises the question of how adequate and prepared we are in the face of these security challenges. That is why, in these circumstances, the Commission's proposal was to create a network of cooperation between centres, providing a security shield that would continuous monitoring of the environment, in order to identify those weaknesses so that we can, at any time, identify and combat an attack, if it occurs, to protect our assets and citizens. The European Centre will guide this development. It is an effort that will involve billions of euros worth of funding. The Centre will be responsible for acquiring, operating and networking these individual operational centres, the EU official went on to say.

He explained that the centre will also involve rapid technical intervention teams.

The centre will ensure that this cyber protection shield works across Europe, and it is not only about having operational centres, but also about having rapid technical response teams that can intervene anywhere in Europe, that can detect and protect during a cyber attack, analyse it and then, based on the findings, improve our systems, understand what has been done, where mistakes have been made and how things can be improved for the future. Creating this team of experts able to react quickly will be part of the centre's mission, working with experts from all over Europe (...) This campus will become a reference point for cyber security not only at European level but also at global level, because Europe is a pillar of stability at global level from a cyber security perspective, too, underlined Roberto Viola, Director General of DG Connect.

The new European Cybersecurity Competence Centre aims to support innovation and industrial policy in the field of cyber security and to develop and coordinate EU cyber security projects.AGERPRES(RO - author: Roberto Stan, editor: Florin Marin; EN - author: Simona Iacob, editor: Maria Voican)