JOINT STATEMENT
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Joint industry statement calls for removing sovereignty requirements from European Cybersecurity Certification Scheme for Cloud Services (EUCS)

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BRUSSELS, 21 November 2023 – The European Banking Federation (EBF), together with the European Savings Banks Group (ESBG), the Association for Financial Markets in Europe (AFME), the European Payment Institutions Federation (EPIF), and Insurance Europe have co-signed a joint statement on the ongoing process of developing a cybersecurity certification scheme for cloud services (EUCS). While the industry welcomes the objective of establishing a minimum set of security and trust criteria for cloud services, the drafting of EUCS should be a purely technical process detailing the technical requirements for such certification.

ENISA’s current candidate scheme includes political and legal sovereignty elements, such as the requirement to have the company’s headquarters located in the EU, restrictions on ownership and governance restrictions. As things stand today, the inclusion of such requirements will be a step back and will ultimately undermine real competition in the European market, reduce choice for cloud customers and harm European industry and citizens.

Cloud adoption by financial services, which is steadily increasing, is key to improving agility, international competitiveness, resilience, client experience and cost efficiency, and even security. Depriving companies of a real choice of cloud providers will endanger their operational resilience and stifle digital innovation, while the lack of transparency in the process is also concerning.

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For more information please contact:

Dimos Karalis
Policy Adviser, Cybersecurity & Innovation, d.karalis@ebf.eu

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About the EBF:
The European Banking Federation is the voice of the European banking sector, bringing together 32 national banking associations in Europe that together represent a significant majority of all banking assets in Europe, with 3,500 banks – large and small, wholesale and retail, local and international – while employing approximately two million people. EBF members represent banks that make available loans to the European economy in excess of €20 trillion and that reliably handle more than 400 million payment transactions per day. Launched in 1960, the EBF is committed to a single market for financial services in the European Union and to supporting policies that foster economic growth.