Mr. Andrus Ansip:

Thank you for those questions. I will begin by addressing the privacy shield. The aim of the Safe Harbor principles was really good as it was to protect Europeans' data. In 2000, we did not have any kind of idea what kind of technical instruments for mass surveillance, for example, would be around in 2013. In 2013, there was the understanding that the Safe Harbor principles were not safe enough. We saw information from the likes of Mr. Snowdon and so on and in 2013 we started to negotiate with the Americans. We got a court ruling when we were almost there with an agreement; with the ruling we had the understanding that we had to continue the negotiations. We have concluded those negotiations.

The EU-US privacy shield, according to my understanding, is a much better and future-proofed solution because it has a review clause. This will be a process and we do not have to wait for another 13 years to understand that we might have some kind of problem. If we have problems, we can immediately fix them. Since 1 August this year, companies have been able to join the EU-US privacy shield. We already have approximately 100 companies that have joined the privacy shield, with 190 companies in the process in the United States. There are approximately 250 companies that have prepared the application for joining the privacy shield. It is proceeding, according to my understanding, as we expected. It is definitely needed. We have to allow free data flows not only across the European Union, but also between the European Union and our partners. At the same time we must protect everybody's privacy.

Cybersecurity is an area where no single member state is able to deal separately with the issues. We have to co-operate. I can give an example from the country I know best. In 2007, we moved a Bronze Soldier war monument from the city centre to a cemetery and were faced with riots over two nights. In some cities they have those kind of riots after every football game where a local team loses but for us it was totally new. We also faced cyber attacks. With fruitful co-operation between the national computer emergency response teams, we were able to cut the majority of those attacks before they crossed our borders. We were able to deal with those cyber attacks because of co-operation. Now we have a network and information security directive and this is also about co-operation and transparency. It is not about making information about those cyber attacks public but it is important for stakeholders and those dealing with cybersecurity to be informed.

We also launched a public-private partnership proposal for cybersecurity and we expect to get €1.8 billion per year of investment for the area soon. I invite Irish companies to join this process. It is really important to protect cyberspace and to do this we must co-operate.