[cooperation-wg] Update on NIS2: European Parliament votes to exclude DNS root servers

Dear colleagues,

Last night the European Parliament's Committee on Industry Research and Energy (ITRE) approved a set of amendments on the NIS 2 proposal, with a majority of 70 votes to 3 and one abstention. The MEPs also voted in favour of opening the negotiations with the other institutions.

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20211022IPR15610/cybersecurity-meps-strengthen-eu-wide-requirements-against-threats

Crucially for this community, these amendments include changes to the way the DNS service providers are included and importantly, the parliament's proposal is to remove the DNS root-servers from the scope of the proposed directive.

We are pleased to find the parliament and its rapporteur, Mr Groothuis, agree with our views that the DNS root and the root-servers should not be subject to (national) legislation, quoting the justification from his report:

"Root name servers should be out of scope; regulating them is contrary to the EU’s vision of a “single, open, neutral, free, secure and un-fragmented network” and could encourage and empower states advocating for a top-down, state-controlled Internet governance approach, instead of the multi-stakeholder approach."

To be clear, this is just one step in the legislative process, but a very important milestone.

Meanwhile on the side of the EU member states ("EU Council") The Horizontal Working Party on Cyber Issues is also busy discussing their views and find consensus on the Council's position. Once that is done, the negotiations between Parliament, Council and Commission can start and develop a final compromise text.

Although these meetings are closed, we have been receiving information that the exclusion of root is being discussed. We hope to find that the member states also support our view that matters concerning the root-server operations should be addressed in a multistakeholder setting and will agree to exclude the DNS root-servers from the proposal.

We will send further updates to this list when we have them,

Best,

Marco Hogewoning
RIPE NCC