Study on the Evaluation of the European Union Agency for Network and Information Security

The European Union Agency for Network and Information Security (ENISA) was established in 2004. The Agency provides advice and recommendations, data analysis, and supports awareness raising and cooperation by the EU bodies and Member States in the field of cybersecurity. ENISA uses its expertise to improve cooperation between Member States, and between actors from the public and private sectors, as well as to support capacity building. The present study involves the evaluation of ENISA over the 2013-2016 period, assessing the Agency’s performance, governance and organisational structure, and positioning with respect to other EU and national bodies. It assesses ENISA’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOTs) with regard to the new cybersecurity and digital privacy landscape. It also provides options to modify the mandate of the Agency to better respond to new, emerging needs and assesses their financial implications. The findings of the evaluation study show that ENISA has made some important achievements towards increasing NIS in the EU. However, a fragmented approach to cybersecurity across the EU and issues internal to the Agency, including limited financial resources, hinder ENISA’s ability to respond to the ever growing needs of stakeholders in a context of technological developments and evolving cybersecurity threats

Phragmites australis: How do genotypes of different phylogeographic origins differ from their invasive genotypes in growth, nitrogen allocation and gas exchange?

It has been suggested that in plant invasions, species may develop intrinsically higher gas exchange and growth rates, and greater nitrogen uptake and allocation to shoots, in their invasive range than in their native habitat under excess nutrients. In this study, native populations of two old world Phragmitesaustralis phylogeographic groups (EU and MED) were compared with their invasive populations in North America [NAint (M) and NAint (Delta)] under unlimited nutrient availability and identical environmental conditions in a common garden. We expected that both introduced groups would have higher growth, nitrogen uptake and allocation, and gas exchange rates than their native groups, but that these enhanced traits would have evolved in different ways in the two introduced ranges, because of different evolutionary histories. Biomass, leaf area, leaf nitrogen concentrations (NH4+ and NO3−) and transpiration rates increased in introduced versus native groups, whereas differences in SLA, leaf pigment concentrations and assimilation rates were due to phylogeographic origins. Despite intrinsic differences in the allocation of C and N in leaves, shoots and rhizome due to phylogeographic origin, the introduced groups invested more biomass in above-ground tissues than roots and rhizomes. Our results support the concept that invasive populations develop enhanced morphological, physiological and biomass traits in their new ranges that may assist their competiveness under nutrient-enriched conditions, however the ecophysiological processes leading to these changes can be different and depend on the evolutionary history of the genotypes