I’ve spent the day in various meetings, starting off with my fellow Commissioners. The hot topic was growth, and of course the situation in Greece and Italy, among other issues for discussion. It seems that it will still take some time before the question of who will govern in both countries becomes clearer. We then had a working lunch with European Parliament President Jerzy Buzek.
Now I am going to speak at a conference on cyber-security. As Vint Cerf, one of the founders of the Internet said: “When we built the framework for the web, we did not think about security.” Now, 20 years later we see how vulnerable we are. And not just individuals, who can have our bank accounts or Facebook accounts hijacked, but also public services, who are extremely vulnerable to this type of crime. The main responsibility to ensure that the net is free and secure lies with the Member States and industry, but due to the nature of these often cross-border crimes, we also need to build capacity within the EU. We need, which I’ve written about previously, a European cybercrime center, but also a global strategy. The EU also cooperates with the United States in this area – we jointly conducted a stress test here in Brussels last week, to test preparedness for a possible cyber attack. The outcome of this exercise will be presented later this year.
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