ECR Member Mario Guarente has been appointed rapporteur on "Critical Infrastructure" during the European Committee of the Regions' Natural Resources (NAT) Commission meeting on 29 January.

Mr Guarente, Mayor of Potenza in Italy, will draw up the CoR's opinion on expanding the scope of the 2008 European Critical Infrastructure directive. In 2019 an evaluation of the Directive 2008/114/EC on the identification and designation of European critical infrastructures (ECIs) concluded that the directive is only of partial relevance today due to a very different security landscape as well as the directive having a limited scope (covering only transport and energy sectors).

Mayor Guarente underlined the honour for him to be a CoR rapporteur on this issue right now, saying: “it is imperative that critical infrastructures are adequately protected against a wide spectrum of threats, be it natural or man-made, unintentional or with malicious intent. Critical infrastructures must be resilient wherever and whenever disruptions appear".

The objectives of the European Commission's proposal are to ensure greater coherence of EU critical infrastructure protection approach, to help Member States achieve resilience of national infrastructures, and to improve information exchange and cooperation. The proposed Critical Entities Resilience (CER) directive would cover ten sectors: energy, transport, banking, financial market infrastructures, health, drinking water, waste water, digital infrastructure, public administration and space.

There will be an exchange of views on Mr Guarente's opinion in March in the NAT Commission followed by adoption in May and adoption in plenary in July.