politico.eu
January 28, 2026 4:16 pm CET
By Sam Clark
Europe is investing heavily in security but not enough in cyber, bloc’s cyber agency chief says.
BRUSSELS — The European Union urgently needs to rethink its cyber defenses as it faces an unprecedented volume and pace of attacks, the head of the bloc's cyber agency told POLITICO.
“We are losing this game,” said Juhan Lepassaar, the executive director of the EU's Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA). “We are not catching up, we're losing this game, and we're losing massively.”
Europe has been pummeled with damaging cyberattacks in recent years, which have shut down major airports, disrupted elections and crippled hospitals. Just in the past week, cyber experts pinned an attempted attack on Poland’s power grid on Russia, and the president of Germany's Bundesbank said in an interview that the central bank faced over 5,000 cyberattacks every minute.
The cyber threats come as Europe deals with war on its eastern border, China's growing power over the global technology market and an increasingly unfriendly United States. In the past year, European countries have pledged to boost defense spending and the EU has shaped many of its policies around security and self-reliance.
Investing in security services but not in cybersecurity creates a “loophole,” Lepassaar warned.
The agency chief's warnings come one week after the European Commission presented a proposal to overhaul its Cybersecurity Act legislation. The bill would allow the EU's cyber agency, based in Athens, to expand its personnel by 118 full-time staff and to spend more on operational costs. The agency now has approximately 150 staff.
But Lepassaar lamented that wasn't nearly enough. He drew a comparison to EU police agency Europol and EU border agency Frontex, which have more than 1,400 and more than 2,500 staff respectively, with more resources on the way.
“We just don't need an upgrade. We need a rethink," he said. “Doubling the capacity is the absolute minimum."
The European Union has fallen short in cyber investment for years and it needs to build an entire new EU-level cyber infrastructure, the agency chief said.
Europe needs to 'step up'
When Lepassaar took charge of the agency in 2019, Europe was in a “totally different environment," he said.
In 2019, approximately 17,000 software flaws were added to a global database logging such vulnerabilities; in 2025, more than 41,000 were added, he said. And in 2019, it took hackers approximately two months on average to use those flaws in an attack, but now it took only one day on average, he said, citing industry and government data.
The cybersecurity industry has warned it now takes hackers far less time to exploit glitches, in part because of AI.
Just as Europe has pledged to take greater responsibility for its physical security, it must do the same in cyberspace, said Lepassaar — an Estonian who previously headed the office of European Commissioner for Digital Affairs Andrus Ansip.
In areas such as cataloging and managing cyber vulnerabilities — an obscure but critical area of cybersecurity — the only organizations systematically working on the problem have long been U.S.-based, Lepassaar said. “We all reap the benefits for free … it's needed that we now step up and take our fair share of this.”
MITRE, a U.S.-based nonprofit group, manages a global database of cyber flaws on which the entire industry relies. It nearly lost funding last year before being bailed out by the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).
European startups and small businesses benefit from a system whose security is “backed up only by MITRE and CISA,” Lepassaar said.
ENISA has started operating a database of cyber flaws — though this was planned before MITRE nearly lost its funding — and recently took on a key technical role that further embeds it at the core of global cybersecurity infrastructure.
“It's part of our obligation as Europe to take our fair share from this,” Lepassaar said.
politico.eu
November 24, 2025 9:12 pm CET
By Mathieu Pollet
“We cannot afford this level of dependence on foreign tech,” lawmakers say in letter obtained by POLITICO.
BRUSSELS — A cross-party group of lawmakers will urge the European Parliament to ditch internal use of Microsoft’s ubiquitous software in favor of a European alternative, according to a letter obtained by POLITICO.
The call comes amid fresh concerns that the dominance of a handful of U.S. tech giants has become too much of a liability for Europe’s security and prosperity, and as the U.S. administration renewed demands for digital concessions at a meeting in Brussels on Monday.
In the scathing letter to be delivered to Parliament President Roberta Metsola on Tuesday, 38 lawmakers also list the screens, keyboards and mouses from Dell, HP and LG — in use across the chamber’s IT systems — as technology that should be ditched.
“With its thousands of employees and vast resources, the European Parliament is best positioned to galvanise the push for tech sovereignty,” the letter reads. “When even old friends can turn into foes and their companies into a political tool, we cannot afford this level of dependence on foreign tech, let alone continue funneling billions of taxpayers' money abroad.”
The lawmakers cite a broad range of European alternatives they argue are viable solutions: from Norwegian internet browser Vivaldi, French search engine Qwant and Swiss secure email suite Proton to German collaboration platform Nextcloud.
“Our mid-term goal should be the complete phase-out of Microsoft products, including the Windows operating system. It’s easier than it sounds,” the lawmakers say, praising the International Criminal Court’s recent move to drop Microsoft over U.S. sanction fears.
The letter is signed by influential members including MEPs Aura Salla and Mika Aaltola from the center-right EPP; Birgit Sippel and Raphaël Glucksmann from the center-left S&D; Stéphanie Yon-Courtin and Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann from the centrist Renew Europe group; Alexandra Geese and Kim van Sparrentak from the Greens; and Leïla Chaibi and Merja Kyllönen from The Left.
“The Parliament's vehicle fleet is almost entirely made up of cars from European brands. The same can be replicated for end-product computer hardware,” they argue. They call to set up a task group of lawmakers and Parliament staffers to help and monitor that transition.
“With enough political will, we will have freed this institution from the danger of foreign tech dependency by the end of the mandate,” they write.
Last week saw Germany swing behind a long-standing push from France to make Europe more reliant on its own technology companies and chart its digital independence from the U.S., at a political summit in Berlin.
Austrian centrist lawmaker Helmut Brandstätter, who coordinated the initiative, said in a statement: “Right now, the European Parliament runs on foreign software that can be switched off, monitored, or politically weaponised overnight. That is not just inconvenient, it is a strategic vulnerability," adding this isn't “anti-American” but “pro European sovereignty.”
“Microsoft is proud to offer the broadest set of sovereignty solutions on the market today,” Robin Koch, a spokesperson for the company, said in a statement. “We will continue to look for new ways to ensure the European Parliament and our other European customers have the options and assurances they need to operate with confidence.”
Cyberattacks are part of Russia’s hybrid warfare strategy, designed not only to cause harm, but to “demonstrate what they are capable of.”
The Norwegian Police Security Service suspects pro-Russian hackers sabotaged a dam in southwestern Norway in April.
Norwegian daily newspaper VG reported that the hackers breached the dam’s control system, opening valves for four hours, sending large amounts of water gushing forth until the valves could be shut.
The chief of the Norwegian Police Security Service (PST) Beate Gangås, disclosed the incident during a presentation on pro-Russian cyber operations at a public event on Wednesday.
According to VG, Gangås said that the number of cyberattacks on Western infrastructure was increasing, often not to cause damage but to “demonstrate what they are capable of.” She also said Norway should be prepared for further hacking attacks.
At the same event, Nils Andreas Stensønes, head of the Norwegian Intelligence Service said that Russia was the biggest threat to Norway’s security.
Cyberattacks on Western targets are part of Russia’s hybrid warfare strategy. In another water-related case in January 2024, a hacking group breached a Texas water facility’s system, causing it to overflow. The suspected hackers are linked to the Kremlin.
The dam is located in the municipality of Bremanger, approximately 150 kilometers north of the city of Bergen. Local media say that the dam is not used for energy production and that the hackers might have exploited a security gap created by a weak password.
