The Effects of the NIS 2 Directive on Cybersecurity in German and Hungarian Law – Can the Conflicts between Cybersecurity and Competitiveness Be Resolved?

By 2025, there will be globally approximately 41 billion devices connected to the Internet of Things while in Europe and globally the number and quality of cyberattacks and crimes committed on this field are increasing. The European Union has adopted only in the last one and a half decades two directives to regulate the requirements of cybersecurity protecting the European economy, the enterprises and citizens as well as Member States and the EU itself. This essay introduces the main regulatory elements of the new NIS 2 directive which must be implemented by October 2024, exploring also the impacts of the directive in the German and Hungarian national legal systems. This includes also a comparison of the provisions of the NIS 2 directive with earlier EU legislative frameworks in this field, especially the NIS directive. The essay also examines the context of the NIS 2 directive with other EU legislation on this field, for example Regulation (EU) 2024/2847 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 O

Keywords: European competitiveness, cybersecurity, NIS directive, NIS 2 directive, implementation, Hungarian legislative act (Kibertantv.), cybersecurity requirements, cybersecurity incidents, entities under the scope of the NIS 2 directive