Photo of Bart Szewczyk

Bart Szewczyk

Having served in senior advisory positions in the U.S. government, Bart Szewczyk advises on European and global public policy, particularly on technology, economic sanctions and asset seizure, trade and foreign investment, business and human rights, and environmental, social, and governance issues, as well as conducts international arbitration. He also teaches grand strategy as an Adjunct Professor at Sciences Po in Paris and is a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the German Marshall Fund.

Bart recently worked as Advisor on Global Affairs at the European Commission's think-tank, where he covered a wide range of foreign policy issues, including international order, defense, geoeconomics, transatlantic relations, Russia and Eastern Europe, Middle East and North Africa, and China and Asia. Previously, between 2014 and 2017, he served as Member of Secretary John Kerry’s Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. Department of State, where he covered Europe, Eurasia, and global economic affairs. From 2016 to 2017, he also concurrently served as Senior Policy Advisor to the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, where he worked on refugee policy. He joined the U.S. government from teaching at Columbia Law School, as one of two academics selected nationwide for the Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellowship. He has also consulted for the World Bank and Rasmussen Global.

Prior to government, Bart was an Associate Research Scholar and Lecturer-in-Law at Columbia Law School, where he worked on international law and U.S. foreign relations law. Before academia, he taught international law and international organizations at George Washington University Law School, and served as a visiting fellow at the EU Institute for Security Studies. He also clerked at the International Court of Justice for Judges Peter Tomka and Christopher Greenwood and at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit for the late Judge Leonard Garth.

Bart holds a Ph.D. from Cambridge University where he studied as a Gates Scholar, a J.D. from Yale Law School, an M.P.A. from Princeton University, and a B.S. in economics (summa cum laude) from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He has published in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Harvard International Law Journal, Columbia Journal of European Law, American Journal of International Law, George Washington Law Review, Survival, and elsewhere. He is the author of three books: Europe’s Grand Strategy: Navigating a New World Order (Palgrave Macmillan 2021); with David McKean, Partners of First Resort: America, Europe, and the Future of the West (Brookings Institution Press 2021); and European Sovereignty, Legitimacy, and Power (Routledge 2021).

The recently agreed Cyber Resilience Act isn’t the only new EU cybersecurity rule set to be published this December: by the end of the year, the European Commission is expected to adopt its draft regulations to establish a European cybersecurity certification scheme (“ECCS”). Continue Reading EU cyber regulation wave quietly rolls on – Commission set to finalize new cyber standards

A would-be technical development could have potentially significant consequences for cloud service providers established outside the EU. The proposed EU Cybersecurity Certification Scheme for Cloud Services (EUCS)—which has been developed by the EU cybersecurity agency ENISA over the past two years and is expected to be adopted by the European Commission as an implementing act in Q1 2024—would, if adopted in its current form, establish certain requirements that could:

  1. exclude non-EU cloud providers from providing certain (“high” level) services to European companies, and
  2. preclude EU cloud customers from accessing the services of these non-EU providers.

Continue Reading Implications of the EU Cybersecurity Scheme for Cloud Services

There is a flurry of new EU initiatives to regulate the metaverse. Last week, the European Commission launched a public consultation (open until May 3, 2023) to “develop a vision for emerging virtual worlds (e.g. metaverses), based on respect for digital rights and EU laws and values” such that “open, interoperable and innovative virtual worlds … can be used safely and with confidence by the public and businesses.” Continue Reading Regulating the Metaverse in Europe

The new EU-wide cyber law, Directive 2022/2555 (NIS2), entered into force on Monday, January 16, 2023. NIS2 builds on the original NIS Directive but significantly expands the categories of organizations that fall within the scope of the law, imposes new and more granular security and incident reporting rules, and creates a stricter enforcement regime. Member states now have until October 18, 2024 to transpose the new directive into their respective national laws.

The passage of NIS2 sets the stage for 2023 to be another big year for cybersecurity in Europe. We expect the global cyber threat landscape to remain challenging and the regulatory landscape to become even more complex due to a raft of new laws including the Cyber Resilience Act (which we covered here), the Critical Entities Resilience Directive (see our post here), the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) (focused on financial services), and the UK’s ongoing reforms to its Network and Information Systems Regulations.

In this blog post, we summarize the key elements of NIS2 and describe what they will mean for your cybersecurity program this year.Continue Reading New EU Cyber Law “NIS2” Enters Into Force

On September 15, 2022, the European Commission published a draft regulation that sets out cybersecurity requirements for “products with digital elements” (PDEs) placed on the EU market — the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA). The Commission has identified that cyberattacks are increasing in the EU, with an estimated global annual cost of €5.5 trillion. The CRA aims to strengthen the security of PDEs and imposes obligations that cover:

  1. the planning, design, development, production, delivery and maintenance of PDEs;
  2. the prevention and handling of cyber vulnerabilities; and
  3. the provision of cybersecurity information to users of PDEs.

The CRA also imposes obligations to report any actively exploited vulnerability as well as any incident that impacts the security of a PDE to ENISA within 24 hours of becoming aware of it.

The obligations apply primarily to manufacturers of PDEs, which include entities that develop or manufacture PDEs as well as entities that outsource the design, development and manufacturing to a third party. Importers and distributors of PDEs also need to ensure that the products comply with CRA’s requirements.

The requirements apply for the lifetime of a product or five years from its placement on the market, whichever is shorter. Due to the cross-border dimension of cybersecurity incidents, the CRA applies to any PDEs that are placed on the EU market—regardless of where they are manufactured—and imposes new mandatory conformity assessment requirements. The proposed regulation will now undergo review and potential approval in the Council of the EU and the European Parliament. Its provisions would apply fully within two years after entry into force, potentially in late 2026. We set out more detail and commentary below based on our initial review of the proposal.Continue Reading EU Publishes Draft Cyber Resilience Act