09 Dec 2019 Quantum communication infrastructure: 9 additional EU countries join the project
During last Digital Assembly held in June, 7 EU Member States signed a declaration in which they commit to exploring -during the next 12 months- the possibility to develop and deploy within 10 years a quantum communication infrastructure in the EU. These Member States are Belgium, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands and Spain. In July, Hungary, Portugal and Poland signed the declaration, hence joining the initiative.
This quantum communication infrastructure will be used for data transit and storage in a highly secure way. It will ultimately link sensitive public and private communication assets all over the EU, such as banks and administrations.
On 3 December, 9 EU Member States signed the declaration on quantum communication infrastructure. These new signatories are Croatia, Cyprus, Greece, France, Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden and Finland. Thierry Breton, Commissioner for Internal Market (and former Atos’ CEO), declared that this project is “critical for EU’s technological sovereignty and to the preparation of the next generation of communications security with quantum-safe encryption, building on quantum entanglement properties.”
The EU is already funding a pilot project on quantum communication infrastructure: OPENQKD, which aims to develop an experimental testbed using Quantum Key Distribution (QKD), an extremely secure form of encryption that has the potential to keep telecommunications, health care, electricity supplies and government services safe from cyber-attacks. Once the QCI is operational in Europe, QKD would be the first service to make use of it.
