EU to spend nearly a billion euros to protect undersea cables

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HELSINKI (Reuters) -The European Commission will redirect almost a billion euros within its budget to boost surveillance of undersea cables and establish a fleet of emergency repair vessels, the Commission’s executive vice president said on Friday.

There is concern among European governments about a series of recent incidents in which power cables, telecom links and gas pipelines have been damaged, possibly on purpose.

“We want to make sure Europe is equipped not only to prevent and detect sabotage to cables but also to actively deter, repair and respond to any threat to critical infrastructure,” said Henna Virkkunen, the executive vice president in charge of security at the Commission.

On Friday, Swedish police said they were investigating a suspected case of sabotage involving an undersea telecoms cable in the Baltic Sea.

NATO said last month that some of its member countries were deploying frigates, patrol aircraft and naval drones in the Baltic Sea to help protect critical infrastructure.

“We know that this is a threat for our security and for our environment, not only in the Baltic Sea area, but all over the European Union,” Virkkunen told reporters in Helsinki.

In the Mediterranean, authorities are investigating explosions on three oil tankers in separate incidents in the last month, in a new sign of suspected sabotage action elsewhere in Europe.

In its action plan, the Commission pledged action to deter, prevent, detect and respond to cable damage. The reallocated budget cash would be used to develop a new data-sharing surveillance mechanism and drone programme.

It also outlined a goal to ensure supplies of spare parts for broken cables and to work towards the creation of an emergency reserve fleet “to deploy or repair electric or optical submarine cables”.

(Reporting by Lili Bayer in Brussels and Anne Kauranen in Helsinki;Editing by Helen Popper)