Opinion

One attack hit eight countries. Europe needs one shield, not twenty-seven.

Hackers shut down supermarket refrigeration from Palermo to Helsinki, and each capital answered alone. Italy's Sala Cyber blocked 630,000 malicious events, and the EU foreign ministers in Brussels on Monday can extend the Tallinn Mechanism so it shields every member state.

In January 2026 Italy opened the Sala Cyber in its foreign ministry and proved a point the whole union should act on. A defence built in one place, done well, can block what no supermarket chain can: over 630,000 malicious events, 3.5 million malicious emails wiped from almost 23 million received. Then came the test. On 2 November, hackers knocked out the refrigeration of supermarkets in Italy and seven other EU countries, and Italy answered with its own meeting and its own statement. One continent, one attack.

One European campaign, answered capital by capital. More than twenty supermarkets were hit in Italy, between Palermo, Catania, Ragusa and Trapani, and in Sicily stores threw away kilos of frozen goods after the 4 a.m. strike. The campaign was not ours alone: shops in Belgium, Luxembourg, Ireland, the Netherlands, Estonia, Finland and Sweden were hit too, like France's in mid-October. Those who say nothing needs to change point to the Sala Cyber already working, and to Antonio Tajani, Italy's foreign minister, whose line is that attacks point east but exact responsibilities must first be established. Fair on responsibilities. But the hackers used one playbook from Palermo to Helsinki, and Italy's own government found the cause: obsolete systems with interfaces exposed on the internet. Most businesses, it added, already had up-to-date protections that repel intrusions.

Extend that tool to every member state and this decade looks different. An attack on one shop shows up on every capital's screens the same hour. The Tallinn Mechanism already coordinates cyber support for Ukraine, and the G7 foreign ministers welcomed projects run under Italy's own chairpersonship at their Paris meeting. The EU Institute for Security Studies, the union's own think tank, argues resilience should be a pillar of Europe's defence. You, starting a job or a business now, would inherit a union that spots the second attack while the first one is still running. That future needs the reach of the ones we already built.

The demand is ready, and the table that can grant it is set. The EU foreign ministers meet in Brussels on Monday, and cyber attacks are on their table. They must turn these promises of solidarity into machinery: extend the Tallinn Mechanism so it defends every member state against hybrid attacks, with threat attribution shared across Europe instead of decided capital by capital. Every ministry already collects the signals on its own screens. Shared, those signals become a map of the whole campaign instead of twenty-seven guesses at one piece of it. Widen the mechanism, and no ministry gives up an agency; every ministry gains every other ministry's sight. It reaches beyond machines: stolen officials' data ended up on the dark web, with Rome and Perugia prosecutors investigating. That is what one capital acting alone cannot undo. Ministers, build the one shield in Brussels on Monday. We will defend it with you.