As cyber issues are taking an increasingly greater role in today’s security agenda, the Latvian Presidency of the Council of the European Union in the first half of 2015 has set Digital Europe as one of three policy priorities. Cyber security and defence form an inherent part of this priority.

For years cyber defence has been a part of EU-led military operations and missions. On strategic level, in 2013 we endorsed the EU Cyber Security Strategy setting cyber defence among our priorities and in November 2014 the Cyber Defence Policy Framework was adopted.

The discussion to advance common understanding and implementation of the policy, identify its challenges and consider the next steps is essential. The conference aims to address these and other issues of cyber defense in a broad audience of policy-makers, senior officials and experts from EU institutions and Member States, representatives of industry and academia. Thus the conference aims at discussing EU cyber defence matters among an audience of approximately one hundred policy-makers, senior officials from EU entities and from EU Member States as well as other interested officials in four panels:

• Implications of the EU’s Cyber Defence Policy Framework;
• The EU’s Mutual Defence and Solidarity Clause in the Cyber Context;
• Cyber Defence in EU Military Operations;
• Civil-Military Cooperation in Cyber Defence.