This brings the total funding to for phase one of the Connecting Europe Facility Digital Work Programme to €420m, with second two about to begin
The European Commission has signed 21 grant agreements for €142 million with backbone cable projects, bringing total funding to €420 million under the first Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) Digital Work Programme.
The Commission says backbone networks, including submarine cables, are critical infrastructures that play an essential role in ensuring high-capacity connectivity as well as improving resilience and security of digital connectivity, as stressed in the Safer Together report.
Moreover, in the White paper on how to master Europe’s digital infrastructure needs and the Recommendation on the security and resilience of submarine cable infrastructures, the Commission set out actions to assess and improve coordination between the Union and its Member States regarding the security and resilience of existing and future submarine cable infrastructure.
This includes mapping cables and related risks. CEF Digital is one of the funding instruments mentioned in the Recommendation to support the deployment of strategic cable projects.
Submarine cables around the world have been attacked, including in northern Europe in the last weeks and the Red Sea. The latter caused disruption to European as well as Asian, Middle Eastern and African connectivity. Some of the sabotage is believed to be state-sponsored, some that of terrorist groups. Moody’s Ratings has put telecoms in the Very High Risk category in its annual cybersecurity heatmap.
Third set
The projects financed under the third set of calls of CEF Digital are intended to boost global connections between Europe and Africa (for example, the Medusa Africa or Canalink-Morocco projects), Middle East (such as the BlueMed East project) and Asia (Arctic connectivity). The funding is also intended to strengthen connections between Member States in the Mediterranean, the Atlantic, the Baltic Sea and Continental Europe (including Central and Eastern Europe).
More information on the cable development projects can be found in the Annex (PDF).
The new projects will also support connectivity in Outermost Regions and Overseas Countries and Territories, like in the Pacific Ocean (such as the NUANUA project), the Caribbean (for instance, the BCA project), the Canary Islands (for example, the PENCAN-X project) and the Azores-Madeira area (like the Atlantic CAM – CM project).
Security and monitoring
All beneficiaries of CEF grants are EU-controlled entities and the cables to be deployed must be built with secure technology. Besides guaranteeing the secure transmission of terabytes of data per second, almost all the funded cables include SMART technologies, which act as large geographical sensors to monitor nearby activities, acting as early warning systems to protect the infrastructure itself.
Additional funding
The second CEF Digital Work Programme 2024-2027 makes available additional €542 million to co-fund backbone connectivity projects, meaning that the Union’s investment plans in these critical infrastructure over the current financial framework will amount to almost €1 billion.
The fourth call under the second CEF Digital is currently open for submissions until 13 February 2025.