Description
Cybersecurity stands out in the Trade and Cooperation Agreement as one of the few areas earmarked for special cooperation in the context of the new UK-EU relationship post-Brexit (TCA, 2020: Part IV, Title II). This prioritisation of cybersecurity reflects, not only the cross-border nature of cyber threats and challenges, but also the continued political willingness to address these threats through cooperation, the depoliticised and technical character of this policy field, and the mutual respect for UK and EU expertise and capabilities (Wolff, Picquet and Carrapico, forthcoming; Walden and Michels, 2021). One would therefore expect to observe a pattern of continued engagement in the area, despite the UK’s now ‘outsider’ status in much of the EU’s formal cybersecurity institutional architecture. We argue, however, that Increased tensions derived from the politicization of the TCA negotiation and implementation, the turn to and emergence of competing security agreements, and the gradual erosion of trust between the EU and UK government, have come to dominate the tone of the UK-EU relationship. In this context we assert that this has implications for the direction of travel of the future cybersecurity relationship, how we can characterise engagement in this policy area, and subsequently, how we can explain the efficacy of any future arrangements for jointly addressing shared cybersecurity threats and challenges. More specifically, we argue that these increased tensions are pushing UK-EU cybersecurity relations in the direction of further selectivity and differentiation within the depth, scope and forms of cooperation in the field.
