Are EU cybersecurity regulations quietly pushing your business towards implementation of post-quantum cryptography (PQC)?

This blog post is published as part of the POSEIDON project, which has received funding from the European Commission under the Horizon Europe programme, grant no. 101225797. POSEIDON aims at advancing and deploying practical PQC solutions specifically for digital identity management, helping protect Europe's identity systems against the emerging quantum threat.

Introduction 

Data your organisation considers safely encrypted today may already be sitting in an attacker’s archive, waiting for the day a quantum computer can unlock it. As capabilities of quantum computers increase, so does the risk of them being used to break traditional encryption, using existing quantum computing algorithms, such as Shor’s algorithm. This could expose vast amounts of data to unintended and/or malicious recipients. This risk is exacerbated through two potential avenues of attack, based on spreading actions in time. The first is an approach based on gathering encrypted data now and decrypting them years later (once the technology in question becomes available); it is known as HNDL - Harvest Now, Decrypt Later. Another, newer approach is that of TNFL - Trust Now, Forge Later attacks, where trust is placed on a signature or certificate today, but attackers forge it through quantum computing in the future. 

Key part of the solution could lie in early adoption of cybersecurity measures aimed at protecting data from quantum-based decryption, through an approach known as Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC). It is based on early implementation of quantum-resistant public-key mechanisms for key establishment, encryption and digital signature, and thus getting ahead of the growth of quantum computing power. Such an approach is favoured in the Coordinated Implementation Roadmap for the Transition to Post-Quantum Cryptography (June 2025), issued by EU Member States with European Commission’s support and setting out a roadmap and timeline for EU-wide transition to PQC. There is a growing consensus that at least critical sectors, handling most sensitive data, should be getting ready to make this transition. However, one of the main challenges in this respect is lack of awareness and/or incentive to act on part of both public and private organisations. 

An incentive of this kind could lie in regulatory action – but before a new legal instrument called e.g., “Quantum Encryption for the EU Regulation” is proposed by the European Commission, it is valuable to look at the existing regulatory landscape. Two relevant cybersecurity instruments in this respect are Directive 2022/2555 on measures for a high common level of cybersecurity across the Union (the NIS2 Directive), which already takes a sectoral approach to cybersecurity, and Regulation (EU) 2024/2847 on cybersecurity requirements for products with digital elements (the Cyber Resilience Act, or CRA), which approaches cybersecurity from the products’ side. This blog post explores the extent to which these instruments could serve as anchors for encouraging public and private organisations to secure their data against quantum-based decryption, especially in light of the European Commission’s 2026 proposal to revise the NIS2 Directive. 

NIS2 Directive & PQC 

For any organisation already working through NIS2 compliance, it helps to know exactly where quantum cryptography sits in the rulebook today. The NIS2 Directive is focused on ensuring cybersecurity in the context of network and information systems functioning in EU’s critical sectors. In this way, it seeks to contribute to a high common level of cybersecurity across the Union. 

Two of the noteworthy pillars of NIS2 are the requirement to establish national cybersecurity strategies, as well as more direct cybersecurity requirements for essential and important entities. Within the first pillar (Article 7), the Member States have to adopt a “national cybersecurity strategy that provides for the strategic objectives, the resources required to achieve those objectives, and appropriate policy and regulatory measures.” The Directive does indicate certain aspects of cybersecurity that ought to be covered, such as supply chain security or managing vulnerabilities. 

Within the second pillar (Article 21), the Member States have to ensure that essential and important entities “take appropriate and proportionate technical, operational and organisational”, cybersecurity-oriented measures. They are to be based on an “all hazards approach”, with baseline elements identified. Among them are “policies and procedures regarding the use of cryptography and, where appropriate, encryption”. This is a broad wording, requiring not the adoption of a specific solution, but rather the mere presence of policies and procedures. Both pillars set only a common floor: as NIS2 is a minimum-harmonisation directive, Member States remain free to add stricter or sector-specific rules on top, so the exact wording and scope can vary somewhat from one national transposition to another. 

Both pillars could be theoretically used to support transition to PQC. National strategies could lay out a comprehensive plan to support it, and Article 21 could be interpreted or developed in such a way as to oblige essential and important entities reliant on encryption to treat and approach the quantum threat as a credible one, requiring treatment through a risk management system – resulting in e.g., eventual transition to PQC for at least some cryptographic mechanisms. 

Commission’s proposal for amendment of NIS2 

The word “quantum” is not present in the original text of the Directive. However, this is not the case in Commission’s proposed revision to NIS2. EC’s proposed directive to amend NIS2 (published in January 2026) approaches this subject matter directly. 

First, for national cybersecurity strategies, it proposes that Member States could be required to enrich them with “policies for the migration to post-quantum cryptography (PQC)”. Recital 8 of the proposed directive gives more depth with respect to the subject matter of such policies. They should: 

• “facilitate the acceleration of strategic planning and the creation of support measures and tools to assess the exposure of cryptographic assets to the risks posed by quantum computers. 

• assist in creating a migration plan and in testing the roll-out of PQC in digital applications and networks, while simultaneously fostering the emergence and uptake of formally verified and evaluated European PQC solutions adhering to compliance frameworks in products and services. 

• align with the milestones set out in Union legal acts and Union policies as well as documents adopted by the NIS Cooperation Group, in particular the Coordinated Implementation Roadmap for the transition to PQC, adopted by the NIS Cooperation Group in June 2025, thus achieving the migration to PQC by 2030 for critical use cases and by 2035 for medium and low level use cases.” 

The direct focus on quantum attacks and migration is a welcome development, as are the timing indications for migration to PQC. The policies are also geared towards providing support for actors who want to transition to PQC and for PQC solutions that adhere to EU compliance frameworks for products and services. However, there is no mention of the reverse approach, to have existing frameworks require adherence/transition to PQC. 

Cyber Resilience Act & PQC 

If your business manufactures, imports or distributes products with digital elements, hardware or software in the EU, there’s a second driver that could be pointing in the direction of PQC. The CRA approaches the issue from a different, complementary angle: instead of regulating operators of critical infrastructure, it sets baseline cybersecurity requirements for manufacturers of hardware and software sold in the EU (“products with digital elements”). Among these, Annex I requires manufacturers to protect the confidentiality of data by encrypting it “at rest or in transit by state-of-the-art mechanisms”. The CRA’s main obligations apply from 11 December 2027, with vulnerability-reporting duties entering into force from 11 September 2026. 

Like Article 21 of NIS2, this “state-of-the-art” wording does not mention quantum computing or PQC by name, but it is deliberately technology neutral. As quantum computers mature and PQC becomes the recognised state-of-the-art in encryption, manufacturers could find themselves obliged to adopt it simply to stay compliant. This matters especially for products the CRA singles out as “important” or “critical”, such as identity management systems, password managers, VPNs or smartcards, whose entire function depends on cryptography, making them particularly exposed to harvest-now-decrypt-later (HNDL) and trust-now-forge-later (TNFL) attacks. As with NIS2, the open question is whether the Commission and Member States will eventually make this expectation explicit, rather than leaving it to be inferred. 

Existing vs prospective duty to implement PQC 

For compliance teams, the practical question is where the transition point lies between today’s soft encouragement and seeing PQC as mandatory in legal terms. It’s clear that right now, under both NIS2 and CRA, encryption has to be considered as an area of potential measures to take. While it could be the case that a compliance team acting for a specific, critical security client finds that PQC should be implemented right away, a direct obligation of this kind is hard to find. Moreover, Commission’s proposed revision of NIS2 that speaks of “achieving the migration to PQC by 2030 for critical use cases and by 2035 for medium and low level use cases” hints that a mandatory obligation to implement PQC might be a good few years away (depending on criticality of an organisation) and the actual measure that would be implemented is not seen as ready in technical and procedural terms. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST - a US body spearheading the work on cryptographic algorithms essential for PQC) only finalised its first PQC standards (ML-KEM, ML-DSA, SLH-DSA) in August 2024; further algorithms and implementation guidance are still under development, and migration paths vary far more across systems than for a mature, interoperable technique like multi-factor authentication (MFA). All these reasons could point towards a phased approach built around the 2030/2035 milestones being more likely and proportionate than an immediate obligation. 

This might be a core reason as to why transition to PQC is not proposed in EC’s proposal as a direct measure that essential and critical entities should include under Article 21(2) of NIS2. A precedent for this direct approach could be found in Article 21(2)(j), which specifically indicates “the use of multi-factor authentication or continuous authentication solutions”. A similar approach can be found within the EU AI Act, where Article 15(5) requires high-risk AI systems to address named risks, such as data poisoning, model poisoning or model evasion. In time, NIS2 could follow the logic behind these provisions, either by mandating PQC as a solution, or by explicitly naming the quantum threat as a risk that essential and important entities must treat within their cryptography and encryption policies. 

Conclusion 

Individuals responsible for cybersecurity of public and private organisations should strongly consider putting transition to PQC on their long-term radars. Normally, it can be difficult to predict emergence of new cyber threats and related technologies. However, the threat posed by quantum computing to traditional encryption is mathematically evident. To use a parallel, the water level near the dam is rising, and it can be imagined reaching the top at a certain point. As quantum computing power grows, together with maturity of PQC solutions, so does the strength of the argument that failing to transition to PQC could be falling short of NIS2’s requirements tied to suitable operation of a risk-management system in essential and important entities, as well as CRA’s manufacturer obligations. At the same time, spurred by the further progression of quantum computing and readiness of PQC solutions, EU legislators might consider a bolder, more direct inclusion of a requirement to transition to PQC, while still taking into account proportionality and complexity of PQC transition, which admittedly could be more challenging than the implementation of e.g., multi-factor authentication. This is all without diminishing the value and possibility of a more flexible approach based on non-binding measures (such as Memoranda of Understanding), or technical implementation, present in standards. 

Timelex combines rare legal expertise in advanced technological fields, such as quantum cryptography, transition to PQC, and related fields (such as identity management), with a practical, business-focused approach. We can help you with assessment of legal obligations to use or adopt PQC as a safeguard that could be required in the future under multiple legal frameworks. Feel free to contact us for this and related work. 

The authors would like to thank Lotte de Graeve for her insightful feedback on this post. 

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or European Cybersecurity Competence Centre. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.