A state of the art report on the external dimension of dependencies and interdependencies of EU critical infrastructures

The European Programme for Critical Infrastructure Protection (EPCIP) defines a series of measures for the protection and resilience of critical infrastructures. The dependencies of critical infrastructures and supply chains in Europe on critical infrastructures outside EU is high in the agenda. The element of external dimension is of paramount importance for EPCIP and the Commission has called in several cases MS to work in this direction. To this end, understanding external interdependencies is a key element for establishing a targeted approach for collaboration with countries outside EU. The present report aims to shed light on the external dimension of interdependencies of critical infrastructures in the EU, based on publicly available information. Furthermore, an important aspect of this report is that it addresses the issue of external interdepedencies also for Key Resources Supply Chains. Finally, leveraging the experience of JRC and Politecnico di Milano in the domain of critical infrastructure protection and their interdependencies, actions at research and risk management level for prevention and mitigation of this kind of risks on EU critical infrastructures and KRSC are proposed.