Germany plans to better protect its critical infrastructure as surging tensions with Russia stoke fears of sabotage attacks and other national security threats.
Proposed legislation would require power utilities, water companies and even some supermarket chains to reduce their vulnerability to terrorism, industrial accidents, natural disasters and public health emergencies.
The package, which aims to bring Germany in line with EU directives, would oblige essential services providers to step up physical security and alarm systems, carry out regular risk assessments and promptly report incidents.
Photo: AFP
The measures cover facilities that provide critical services to more than 500,000 people in sectors including energy, water, food, health, transportation, information technology, telecommunications, financial services and waste disposal.
A wake-up call came weeks ago in Berlin when a midwinter arson attack on a high-voltage power cable claimed by a far-left militant group plunged tens of thousands of households into icy darkness for nearly a week.
“The left-wing extremist attack on the Berlin power grid and all the many other attacks — both small and large — in recent months have shown that we simply have to protect our critical infrastructure better,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on Wednesday.
Information about such infrastructure should no longer be so easily available to the public, he said, calling for a shift from “transparency towards greater resilience.”
German lawmaker Konstantin von Notz, a security expert, said that the government’s response to the mounting threats had been “wholly inadequate” and that the new package is “far too late and too poorly crafted.”
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