Protecting critical infrastructure: Better protection against sabotage and attacks

afp | The Greens have the government’s plans for the better Protection of the so-called critical infrastructure criticized as “absolutely inadequate”. “We will remain miles away from the urgently needed uniform protection of our critical infrastructure in the future,” said parliamentary group vice-president and security expert Konstantin von Notz to the AFP news agency. The Kritis umbrella law is expected to be passed by the Bundestag on Thursday afternoon.

The law is intended to oblige operators of electricity and telecommunications networks and other systems to have stricter security concepts and emergency plans. The introduction of an incident reporting system is also planned. The aim is to provide better protection against sabotage, terrorist attacks and the consequences of natural disasters. Kritis is the official abbreviation for critical infrastructure.

The topic had been lying dormant for a long time, “we expressly welcome the fact that we are finally moving forward,” said von Notz. Nevertheless, what the Union and the SPD have now presented “still falls far short of expectations”. The government’s proposals “come far too late and are poorly crafted”. Specifically, von Notz accused Federal Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt (CSU) of “massive oversights”.

The Greens have their own proposal

“Every ministry is still cooking its own soup,” said the Green politician. Chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU) has promised that the National Security Council should provide a remedy here. “The Chancellery hasn’t delivered anything either.” Still standing numerous overdue legislation starting with the “reform of the law of the intelligence services, improved drone defense, long-announced changes to the constitution in the defense of IT attacks and much more.”

The Greens are submitting their own motion in the plenary session and are demanding, among other things, that a uniform reporting office be created for the operators of critical systems and that uniform IT security standards apply for the federal and state governments. The group also demands that public administration be included in the protected area and that area exceptions for the federal administration be deleted. Last but not least, the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) must be strengthened in its independence.

There was one in January Attack on the Berlin power grid was carried out, which led to days of outages in several parts of the city. Against this background, the… Demands for protection the infrastructure has recently become more pressing.