Principles and Policies of Resilience in European Critical Infrastructures: Cases from the Sectors of Gas and Air Transport

Abstract

This article aims to contribute to the development of legal research on the regulation of resilience by analysing how to operationalize the resilience paradigm in the area of European Critical Infrastructures (ECIs). ECIs are those assets providing essential services which disruption or collapse is able to produce transboundary externalities in more than one Member State; that is, at regional levels or throughout the European Union (EU).Today’s protection of ECIs focuses on the promotion of resilience as a fundamental characteristic that preserves the functioning of services in disaster-related situations. The resilience paradigm raises significant challenges to EU law and regulation. First, law itself has to become familiar with the undetermined concept of resilience. Second, in order to avoid unjustified burdens on operators and on the collectivity as a whole, law has to understand to what extent it is able to infuse with resilience ECIs’ organization and governance. In this task, policy is a complementary tool that supports law in the understanding of resilience.