Mr. Juhan Lepassaar:

As to whether it is enough, every member state needs to define the needs of the sector in its economic structure. The average percentage of investments across the almost 1,000 entities of essential service providers we surveyed this year is 10%. When I say on average, they also seem to invest 41% less than their US counterparts. If we put those two together, we arrive more or less at the 15% category. I would say 15% is a good number from which to start but I am a cybersecurity expert.

The key factor behind any kind of collaborative or co-operative response is trust. We see a rise in trust at the technical level among CSIRT network members, which is very encouraging because, essentially, that enables member states to reach out in times of crisis both to share information and to find more collaborative ways to respond to potential crisis, and during a crisis to reach out to seek assistance if it is needed. The determining factor in that instance is the will of the member state. The Union cannot and should not impose any kind of collaboration. It should come from member states and they can only probably do that if they have a sufficient level of trust among themselves. We need to find ways to make these collaborative platforms more trustworthy and to ingrain mechanisms to ensure the different actors involved have a certain level of maturity and that maturity is maintained in order that the trust will not diminish. This is something ENISA is in charge of and it should help these platforms to achieve. Whether the capacities or capabilities are there depends very much on this level of trust. I repeat the very good approach of the Irish National Cyber Security Centre. It has invested in building this trust not only within Ireland but across the EU, for which I am very thankful.