The European digital sovereignty – a common objective for France and Germany
In the continuity of the objective announced by France in its National strategy for digital security in October 2015, France and Germany affirmed at the highest level during the Franco-German Council of Ministers of April 7th, 2016.
The importance of their bilateral cooperation in cybersecurity, and their united commitment to promote European digital sovereignty around three major pillars:
- the reinforcement of the capacity of EU the Member States to defend their networks and to strengthen their digital resilience;
- the development of an autonomous, innovative, effective and diversified industry at the European level, in particular in the fields of cybersecurity and trusted digital products;
- the ability for Europeans to decide in an autonomous way of the level of security for their data, in particular in the context of negotiations of trade agreements.
In the line of the ANSSI-BSI joint statement pronounced during the Forum international de la cybersécurité (FIC) in Lille last January, the conclusions of the Franco-German Council of Ministers of April 7th, 2016 thus ratify a new dynamics for bilateral cooperation, and constitute an important progress for European cybersecurity.
A dynamic bilateral cooperation
For many years, France and Germany have been working together in many fields, such as cloud-computing, security certification and industrial synergies. These areas of cooperation will be widened and developed in the future in order to raise the level of cybersecurity in France, Germany and more largely within the European Union.
France and Germany are among the most advanced countries of the European Union with regards to cybersecurity, in particular thanks to their critical infrastructure protection frameworks, which are in line with the spirit of the European directive on Network and information security (“NIS directive”).