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Migration and Home Affairs

Evaluation of Council Directive 2008/114 of 8 December 2008 on the identification and designation of European critical infrastructures

Date of roadmap: 13/03/2018

Directive 2008/114 establishes a procedure for identifying and designating European Critical Infrastructures (ECI) in the transport and energy sectors that, were they to be disrupted or destroyed by an act of terrorism or other type of incident, would have significant cross-border impacts. The Directive also provides a common approach for assessing the need to improve the protection of designated ECI. The Directive is one pillar in the European Programme for Critical Infrastructure Protection (EPCIP).

The Directive calls for Member States to designate ECI by way of agreement with other Member States that may be significantly affected in the event that the functioning of the infrastructure is disrupted or the infrastructure itself destroyed. The owners/operators of designated ECI are obligated to develop Operator Security Plans (OSPs) for use in identifying those elements of each ECI that are particularly crucial and thus merit enhanced security measures in the interest of protection. The Directive also stipulates that Security Liaison Officers (SLOs) should be designated for each ECI. This function serves a a points of contact between ECI's owners/operators and the competent authority at the Member State level on matters of security.

The purpose of the evaluation at hand is to provide the Commission with a qualitative and quantitative evaluation of Directive 2008/114 since it was introduced in 2008 up to the present day. Specifically, the evaluation will assess the scope and content of the Directive, as well as how and to what extent the Directive has been implemented at both the Member State and European levels.

Roadmap for this initiative

The Roadmap published in March 2018 serves to inform stakeholders and citizens about how the Commission intends to carry out the evaluation of the Directive.

Public Consultation

The Consultation Strategy (PDF)outlines the consultation objectives, maps the relevant stakeholders and explains which consultation methods and tools that the European Commission considered in carrying out the evaluation.

A twelve-week Public Consultation was carried out as part of the evaluation. This was organised via the Commission's 'Have your say' page. The public Consultation was launched on 19 November 2018 and concluded on 11 February 2019.

Documents related to the Public Consultation

Documents relating to the evaluation

Reference documents