Expert report Cybersecurity in the context of IPCEI
In the context of its advice on IPCEI - Important Projects of Common European Intrest - VARIO commissioned expert reports on four strategic value chains. This report concerns the value chain Cybersecurity (CS).
These reports are part of the broader advisory process set up by VARIO in early 2020 at the request of the then Flemish Minister of Economy and Innovation Hilde Crevits. She asked VARIO to conduct a strategic analysis of the value chains identified by the Strategic Forum on IPCEI at the end of 2019 as potential future IPCEIs. "After all, we will have to make choices on which projects we want to prioritize with our knowledge institutions and industry. We need to focus our resources and this will require the necessary substantiation. VARIO can provide an important insight into this," Minister Crevits said at the time.
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VARIO divided this advisory process into a number of phases:
- Phase I: Because at the time of the request for advice, the FOD Economy had already launched a call for the submission of 'expressions of interest' for an IPCEI ‘Hydrogen Technologies and Systems’, VARIO gave priority to mapping the hydrogen value chain. VARIO presented its advisory report 12 ‘Strategic Exploration IPCEI – part I Hydrogen’ in July 2020 to the then Flemish Minister of Economy and Innovation Hilde Crevits.
- Phase II: Because of the large workload involved, VARIO then decided to have external experts conduct the analysis of four value chains - IIoT, CCAV, Smart Health and Cybersecurity. Meanwhile, it quickly became clear that still other value chains were circulating as potential IPCEIs. The confrontation with the Covid crisis and related disruptions in supply chains, and the lack of strategic autonomy in certain sectors made other value chains more of a priority: 2nd IPCEI Batteries, 2nd IPCEI Microelectronics, next generation cloud infrastructure and services, health… In order to be well prepared to respond to unexpected future opportunities regarding IPCEI, VARIO decided to develop an assessment framework for IPCEI, which resulted in VARIO advisory report 22: ‘Strategic exploration study IPCEI Part II: IPCEI assessment framework’ (September 2021).
- Phase III: In the second half of 2021 and first half of 2022, the four external expert reports were validated through workshops with a large number of stakeholders. The expert reports were supplemented with the comments from the validation workshops by VARIO staff (September 2022).
VARIO emphasizes that the report reflects the external expert's views and recommendations, supplemented by information from the validation workshop.