STRASBOURG, June 26 (Xinhua) — In a unanimous vote, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) adopted a resolution on Friday in Strasbourg that called on member states to increase protection of critical infrastructure against possible cyber attacks.
The resolution, “Increasing co-operation against cyberterrorism and other large-scale attacks on the Internet,” recommends to participating states in the Council of Europe (CoE) to “draw up Internet-independent emergency plans against cyberattacks on critical services and infrastructure,” including electricity services, fuel lines, power plants, airports, hospitals, and others.
The call comes at the end of what PACE President Anne Brasseur called an “extraordinary” summer plenary session which began on Monday and welcomed UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who addressed the assembly on Tuesday.
Ban used his address to urge parliamentarians to accept the “common responsibility to act before more lives are lost” in the on-going migrant crisis facing Europe.
In a press conference on Friday, Brasseur echoed the UN chief’s call, saying “We must work together. This is a global problem and it needs global answers, but this doesn’t mean that Europe doesn’t need to take on its responsibilities.”
Thursday featured a current events debate in the PACE general assembly on “The need for a common European response to migration challenges,” in which parliamentarians paid special attention to substantial efforts made by Turkey to accept refugees from Syria, and called for increased burden sharing in the crisis.
“We need to be firm and get rid of the populistic approach where everybody wants to close down his borders,” Brasseur declared.
“For me it’s not acceptable that we are putting up walls 25 years after the Berlin Wall has been dismantled, but now we are putting up walls between countries or in our minds, and we need to combat that,” she added.
The session also saw continued sanctions against the Russian delegation, though Brasseur emphasized that in its resolution, the PACE assembly had “left bridges open” for continued dialogue.
The week also included a resolution urging media companies to sign up to a corporate code of ethics, increased transparency on media ownership, and a resolution advocating better protection for whistleblowers, which urged the United States to allow American whistleblower Edward Snowden to return without fear of criminal prosecution.
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