Towards a Baltic Sea Region Strategy in Critical ... - Helsinki.fi

CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION
CI should be taken care of and protected by the Member States, only those CI that
can be clearly identified as ‘European’ should be covered by the EPCIP. There was
a lively discussion about how to define the ‘Europeaness’ of a CI. How many
countries should be involved? How should one define the severity of European
level disturbances if these ECI collapse or come under attack? Should the
infrastructure be located in the EU area or could some CI outside the Union be CI
for the EU and, if so, what would it entail? In any case, the current Directive
Proposal defines ECI as follows:
“’European Critical Infrastructure’ (ECI) means critical infrastructures
which disruption or destruction would significantly affect two or more
Member States, or a single Member State if the critical infrastructure is
located in another Member State. This includes effects resulting from
cross-sector dependencies on other types of infrastructure.”
(Commission 2006a, p. 15)
CI definitions in the BSR
If we take a look at the BSR countries, we see that their CIP terminology and
definitions do not usually follow the US, NATO or EU terminology precisely.
Some countries follow their own longer-term traditions and solutions adapted to
new circumstances. In many BST countries the contemporary CI concept is based
on the traditional total defence or civil defence systems that were built up during
the Cold War. 13 In other countries, CI-related issues were simply seen as a part of
the general national emergency management system and contingency plans. It has
been possible to develop these systems towards crisis management systems that
take into account other types of threats and emergency situations that did not
figure much on the previous agenda.
The degree of sophistication of CIP strategies and their respective definitions
vary in BSR countries. In general, the Nordic countries and Germany have welldeveloped
and detailed strategies; while in some countries CIP-related issues are
dealt with within more general national security concepts or strategies, or then
more developed CIP strategies are currently in the process of being developed. 14 In
order to depict the general features – similarities, differences, trends – of the
13 ‘Total defence’ usually refers to the need to take all the following five defence dimensions into
account: military defence, economic defence, civil defence, social defence, and psychological
defence.
14 One could say that the Nordic countries and Germany have rather specific CIP strategies,
whereas the Baltic States, Poland and Russia have included these issues, to various degrees and
sophistication, in their national security strategies. In Poland, a “National Plan for Critical
Infrastructure Protection” is soon to be published, see: Interministerial meeting concerning critical
infrastructure (2007) and Meeting with critical infrastructure operators (2007). For some of the
other BSR countries not discussed here, see the “National Security Concept of the Republic of
Latvia” (2002); “National Security Strategy of the Republic of Lithuania” (2002/2005); for
Denmark, see National Sårbarhedsrapport (2006), Et robust og sikkert samfund Regeringens
politik for beredskabet i Danmark (2005), OECD (2006); Russia’s strategies are best expressed in
the “Doctrine of the Information Security of the Russian Federation” (2000) and “National
Security Concept of the Russian Federation” (2000), of which the first one especially can be seen
as relevant as it focuses on CII. For Russia, see also Abele-Wigert and Dunn (2006).
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