[cooperation-wg] EU Update: LIBE Committee votes on NIS2 and CER

Dear colleagues,

I'd like to provide a short update on some of the European legislative proposals which we are tracking, especially as these proposals probably have wider implications for the Internet industry and the members of this community.

This update concerns decisions made by the European Parliament's commission on Civil Liberties (LIBE) regarding amendments on two different proposals: One being a new set of rules for providers of critical infrastructure, or "resilience of critical entities" (proposal 2020/0365). The other set of amendments concerns the proposal for a new Network and Information Security directive, or NIS2 in short (proposal 2020/0359).

Important in the amendments on the critical entities draft is that MEPs are proposing to alter the scope of the directive and suggest to include language that defines "European significance" for entities that offer a similar service in at least 3 member states.

With agreement to this set of amendments the parliament has now adopted its position and is ready to enter the next stage of the process, the so called trilogue in which a final text will be negotiated between the European Commission, the European Parliament and the European Council (member states).

A press release, which has references to the directive and the proposed amendments is available at https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20211006IPR14307/essential-infrastructure-new-rules-to-boost-co-operation-and-resilience

The same committee also discussed and agreed to a set of amendments concerning the NIS2 proposal. However, in this case the parliament's ITRE committee is leading on the dossier. This means that the proposed changes from the LIBE committee will be brought as input to the ITRE deliberations and have to be merged with theirs to form a final set of proposed changes that the ITRE committee will then vote on. This final vote is now scheduled for 28 October.

Unfortunately not all the amendments are publicly available but the main opinion of the LIBE committee, which contains a large set of them, can be found at https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/LIBE-PA-693822_EN.pdf

We will continue to monitor the developments as the ITRE proposed amendments also contain changes in language and scope, which would remove the DNS root-servers from the scope of the directive.

As I explained above, the parliamentary vote on amended text is only the first step towards the final negotiations to find a compromise. We believe however that, if the ITRE committee agrees to exclude the DNS root servers, it would mark a significant milestone. Such a position would provide a great starting point for the trilogue. Where we hope the other parties involved will also agree that the operations of the DNS root name-servers should should be excluded from the scope. On the grounds that core functionality like this, having global significance, should be left to the multistakeholder model of Internet governance.

Regards,

Marco Hogewoning
Manager Public Policy and Internet Governance - RIPE NCC