The EU Commission has opened a public consultation on draft guidance to help companies apply the EU’s Cyber Resilience Act (CRA), a regulation that sets baseline cybersecurity requirements for hardware and software ‘products with digital elements’ to reduce vulnerabilities and improve security throughout a product’s life cycle. The guidance is framed as practical help, especially for microenterprises and SMEs, and the consultation runs until 31 March 2026.
The CRA is designed to make ‘secure by design’ the default for connected products people use every day, from consumer devices to business software, while giving users clearer information about a product’s security properties. In timeline terms, the Act entered into force on 10 December 2024. The incident reporting duties start on 11 September 2026, and the main obligations apply from 11 December 2027, giving industry a runway but also a clear countdown.
What the Commission is trying to nail down now are the parts companies have found hardest to interpret: how the rules apply to remote data processing solutions (cloud-linked features), how they treat free and open-source software, what ‘support periods’ mean in practice (i.e. how long security upkeep is expected), and how the CRA fits alongside other EU laws. In other words, this is less about announcing new rules and more about reducing legal grey zones before enforcement ramps up.
The guidance push also lands amid a broader policy drive, as on 20 January 2026, the Commission proposed a new EU cybersecurity package, built around a revised Cybersecurity Act and targeted NIS2 amendments. The package aims to harden ICT supply chains, including a framework to jointly identify and mitigate risks across 18 critical sectors, and would enable mandatory ‘de-risking’ of EU mobile telecom networks away from high‑risk third‑country suppliers. It also proposes a revamped EU cybersecurity certification system with simpler procedures, giving a default 12‑month timeline to develop certification schemes, while cutting red tape for tens of thousands of firms and strengthening ENISA’s role, including early warnings, ransomware support, and a major budget boost.
Taken together, the EU is moving from strategy documents to operational details, product security on one side (CRA) and ecosystem-level resilience on the other (supply chains, certification, incident reporting and supervision). For companies, that can be both reassuring and demanding: clearer guidance should reduce uncertainty, but the compliance reality may still be layered, especially for businesses spanning devices, software, cloud features, and cross-border operations. The Commission’s stakeholder feedback window is essentially a test of whether these rules can be made workable without diluting their bite.
Why does it matter?
Beyond technical risk, this is increasingly about sovereignty: who sets the rules for digital products, who can be trusted in supply chains, and how much dependency is acceptable in critical infrastructure. Digital governance expert Jovan Kurbalija argues that full ‘stack’ digital sovereignty, that is to say control over infrastructure, services, data, and AI knowledge, is concentrated in very few states, while most countries must balance openness with autonomy. The EU’s current wave of cybersecurity governance fits that pattern: it’s an attempt to turn security standards, certification, and supply-chain choices into a practical form of strategic control, not just to prevent hacks, but to protect democratic institutions, economic competitiveness, and trust in the digital tools people rely on.
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