Law in the Age of Hybrid Threats
Joint symposium of Contemporary Central & East European Law journal and Centre for Research on Law and Hybrid Threats at ILS PAS
According to the European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats (Hybrid CoE), hybrid threats ‘are harmful activities that are planned and carried out with malign intent (…) [with the aim to undermine] a target, such as a state or an institution, through a variety of means, often combined.’[1] In a joint publication with the European Commission, the Hybrid CoE identified thirteen domains in which hybrid threats target States: infrastructure, cyber, space, economy, military/defence, culture, social/societal, public administration, intelligence, diplomacy, political, information, and legal.[2] When it comes to the last one, actors deploying hybrid threats may choose from a variety of tools, such as ‘exploiting legal thresholds, gaps, complexity and uncertainty; circumventing its legal obligations; avoiding accountability; leveraging rule-compliance by the targeted state; exploiting the lack of legal inter-operability among targeted nations; using its own regulatory powers under domestic law; and utilizing the law and legal processes to create narratives and counter-narratives.’[3] What is important is that these tools may, but do not necessarily have to, violate the law.
