Estonia’s Minister of Foreign Trade and Information Technology, Raul Siem, signed the European Union’s Declaration on the European Quantum Communication Infrastructure (EuroQCI) initiative in October 2020. According to the Estonian Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications, the declaration commits Estonia to working with other EU member states to develop and deploy a quantum communication infrastructure across the bloc within the next decade.
Minister Siem stated that given the rapid development of technology and quantum computing, Estonia’s digital systems and current encryption solutions may become vulnerable in the coming years. He added that joining the EuroQCI community was a first step in ensuring that Estonian systems and society are protected against future cyber threats.
Estonia joined 24 other European countries that had already signed the declaration. The European Commission noted that the EuroQCI would consist of a terrestrial segment using fiber-optic networks and a space-based satellite segment. The initiative was originally launched in June 2019 when seven EU member states agreed to collaborate on pan-European quantum communication infrastructure.