Opinion in the form of a letter on the Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on information security in the institutions, bodies, offices and agencies of the Union

07.10.2025

Mr Javier Zarzalejos

Chair

Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs

BRUSSELS

Subject: Opinion in the form of a letter on the Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on information security in the institutions, bodies, offices and agencies of the Union (COM(2022)0119 – C90121/2022 – 2022/0084(COD))

Dear Mr Chair,

Under the procedure referred to above, the Committee on International Trade (INTA) has been asked to submit an opinion to your committee. At its meeting of 24 September 2025, the committee decided to send the opinion in the form of a letter. It considered the proposal and adopted its opinion in the form of a letter at its meeting of 6 October 2025.

INTA welcomes the Commission’s proposal as it could lead to the greater uniformity and modernisation of the rules applicable to information security among the EU institutions and bodies. This framework should however only serve as a practical tool to allow the EU institutions to exercise fully their rights and fulfil their obligations enshrined in the Treaties, consequently it must be avoided that the adoption of this regulation affects the institutional prerogatives under the Treaties that the European Parliament (EP) has.

Under the rules of the 2010 Framework Agreement on relations between the European Parliament and the European Commission INTA has a very well established longstanding working relationship with the relevant services of the Commission for sharing and reception of information, including sensitive non-classified information and certain classified information, falling under its remit under the EP Rules of Procedure, which also includes EU textual proposals as well as consolidated negotiation texts related to trade and investment agreement negotiations. The European Parliament and the Commission have just finished the negotiations on the revised version of the 2010 Framework Agreement. We strongly underline that the adoption of this regulation shall take into account the outcome of that revision and not lead to any restrictions as to the scope, frequency and manner of transmission of such information.

As to the particular details of the proposal:

1) The above-mentioned considerations regarding the institutional prerogatives need to be appropriately applied in the formulation of Article 32 on the originator control the application of which must not limit such institutional prerogatives. Article 54 of the proposal is incomplete in the same manner, as it does not refer to the rights and obligations under the Treaties that an EU institution has as the basis for sharing of the EU classified information.

2) It should be clarified in the proposal that Members of the EP should have access by virtue of their mandate to all necessary information on the basis of the “need-to-know principle” in order to exercise the powers vested to them by the Treaties and related to all trade policy instruments based on Article 207 TFEU, including in cases when such information stems from different legal bases as necessary.

3) A mechanism should be established how to deal with cases of over-classification of the information, notably in the form of consultations and a final decision between the originator and the recipient of the information.

4) INTA calls on LIBE committee as the committee responsible to reconsider whether the establishment of the category of “NORMAL” information (Article 13 of the proposal) provides sufficient benefits that would outweigh the additional administrative requirements that would arise from the creation and application of this category of information and its distinction from “PUBLIC USE” information.

Yours sincerely,

Bernd Lange