EU calls for “fast and united response” after France accuses Iran of cyberattacks

A European Commission today advocated a “fast and united response” in the European Union (EU) after France accused the Iranian Revolutionary Guard of being behind a cyber attack that hit hundreds of supermarkets.

“ We note that France has blamed these attacks on Iran. Pending consultations with the Member States, the European Union expresses its readiness to provide a rapid and united response,” said the spokesman for the European Commission for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Anouar El Anouni.

Speaking at the press conference of the institution in Brussels, he said that “the EU expresses its full solidarity with France following cyberattacks that disrupted the cooling systems of hundreds of French supermarkets”.

“The EU has consistently called on all States to refrain from malicious behaviour in cyberspace and will continue to combat this type of activity, using all the tools at its disposal,” said Anouar El Anouni.

Among these mechanisms, the spokesman highlighted the EU's set of cyber diplomacy instruments, including the possibility of sanctions, as well as the Cyber-Resilience Regulation and the NIS2 Directive.

Year El Anouni recalled that the EU has already adopted restrictive measures against the Iranian entity Ana Pasargad in March 2026 under the European cyber-attack sanctions regime, due to its action against several Member States, including Sweden and France.

The spokesman also recalled the sanctions imposed on Iran due to its nuclear programme, human rights violations and actions preventing freedom of navigation, as well as the designation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organisation.

“ We are also working on new cybersecurity sanctions,” he said.

The alert arises in a context of the growing complexity of threats to European cybersecurity, identified in the second report on the State of Cybersecurity in the Union, today released by the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA).

According to the document, “intrusion activity has remained significant and diversified” in the EU, with geopolitical developments “to influence community cyberspace activity” in recent months.

“ The activity motivated by ideological issues is the predominant category in terms of volume, although these incidents generally have a limited impact. On the other hand, activities motivated by financial interests continued to represent incidents with the greatest impact on the continuity of the activities of organizations in the short term”, according to ENISA.

This EU agency also warns that Artificial Intelligence is “an important element in the threat landscape, namely by functioning as an attack capabilities multiplier, enhancing conventional methods used in cyberspace, and by accelerating the processes of discovery and exploitation of vulnerabilities”.