engleski

Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and crisis on the operations of critical infrastructure and essential services operators in South East Europe

By mid-2020, COVID-19 pandemic (referring the period of writing this analysis) has caused a large number of deaths, significant economic damage and the collapse of many companies around the world, and surprisingly highlighted the considerable unreadiness of international organizations and the vast majority of countries to achieve timely and coordinated responses to the challenges they faced. That has additionally complicated the situation, intensified the effects of the crisis and created numerous cascading effects in all sectors. Referring to the European continent, due to the delayed reaction, insufficient cooperation and concrete plan of both the European Union and the member states at the beginning of the crisis, borders were closed, economies slowed down and great uncertainty regarding all important political, business and social processes has emerged. Over time, the situation has partially stabilized – cooperation, coordination and solidarity has manifested but we are still in a state where we are chasing COVID-19 consequences, the crisis is still unbridled and still insufficiently managed. In relation with all that has been mentioned, great pressure was placed on critical infrastructures and essential services operators, who in circumstances of big uncertainty, closed borders, reduced cooperation and exchange of information had to ensure continuous operation of their business processes, protect themselves and their investments and ensure uninterrupted delivery of goods and service to its customers as well as other critical infrastructures. Where, referring to the text in the previous issue of the World Security Report (Summer 2020) „At the same time, it’s necessary to point out that the pandemic threat wasn’t among the ones properly addressed by critical infrastructures’ business continuity plans.“ This has put critical infrastructures operators in the position of great stress and the need for vigorous action. This analysis has the purpose to show in general how the operators of critical infrastructures and essential services from Southeast Europe have faced the COVID-19 pandemic and crisis, while the aim is to point out certain specifics in their response and identified lessons from the current part of the crisis. The methodology used in making the analysis consisted of three cross-cutting levels. At the first level, a desk top survey was used, through which the official websites of a number of critical infrastructures and essential services operators from Southeast Europe were reviewed and analyzed with the information they published related to business activity in this crisis. At the second level, electronic correspondence was used with a number of experts with executive functions within critical infrastructures (directors and security coordinators) who are directly responsible for the operation of critical infrastructures. Multiple responses were received from Northern Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia (colleagues in other countries were contacted but their responses were not received until this text was written). At the third level, oral interviews were conducted with subject matter experts from Croatia and interviews by telephone with experts from Bosnia and Herzegovina. So this qualitative research primarily relates to the analysis of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the operations of critical infrastructures operators in Southeast Europe viewed from the perspective of operators where some of them have asked to remain anonymous.

critical infrastructure protection ; South-East Europe

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