Parliament, EU Member States, the Commission and the EU Cybersecurity Agency tested the EU's response to and crisis plans for potential cybersecurity incidents affecting EU elections.
The objective of the exercise, which took place today in the European Parliament, was to test how effective EU Member States and the EU's response practices and crisis plans are and to identify ways to prevent, detect and mitigate cybersecurity incidents that may affect the upcoming EU elections. This exercise is part of the measures being implemented by the European Union to ensure free and fair elections in May 2019.
More than 80 representatives from EU Member States, together with observers from the European Parliament, the European Commission and the EU Agency for cybersecurity (ENISA), participated in this first EU table-top exercise (with the code name EU ELEx19) on the resilience of the upcoming European Parliament elections. The main responsibility for protecting the integrity of the elections lies with the Member States, and the overall objective of the exercise was to test and further strengthen their preparedness – especially their election and cybersecurity authorities – in the face of hybrid cyber-enabled threats, and to assess their ability to swiftly develop and maintain situational awareness at national and EU level if a serious cybersecurity incident which could impact on the integrity of the 2019 EU elections were to occur.
In line with this European Commission recommendation, a European Cooperation Network on elections has been established. This network has already met three times in Brussels to discuss necessary actions to address potential threats to the elections and thereby strengthen the resilience of the European Union's democratic systems. One of the actions that this network decided to pursue was the organisation of a table-top exercise to test EU's cybersecurity preparedness to ensure secure, free and fair EU elections 2019.
Today's cybersecurity test also goes hand-in-hand with the Action Plan against disinformation that the European Union adopted last December to build up capabilities and strengthen cooperation between Member States and EU institutions to proactively address the threats posed by disinformation.