Europacable urges stronger EU measures for subsea cable security

Europacable has presented recommendations to the EU Council Working Party on Critical Infrastructure/Critical Entities Resilience to strengthen the security and resilience of subsea power and telecom cables.

• Main proposals include mandatory security screening of non-trusted third‑country cable suppliers, European preference in public procurement, wider deployment of monitoring, sensing and “Smart Cable” technologies, mandatory repair service agreements, strategic stockpiling of grid essentials, and ensuring repair vessels through market-based service level agreements rather than an EU-owned fleet.
• The presentation highlights that subsea power and telecom cables are strategic net‑zero and digital infrastructure, already protected under normal conditions via robust design, burial and monitoring, and calls for upgraded maintenance and repair SLAs, OPEX compensation schemes at national/EU level, promotion and regional harmonisation of existing repair agreements, continuous fleet renewal, and creation of regional security policy response frameworks in line with the EU Cable Security Action Plan.