The Commission has signed 21 grant agreements for €142 million with backbone cable projects, bringing total funding to €420 million under the first CEF Digital Work Programme, reinforcing the EU's commitment to a connected and secure digital future.
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 forth specific actions to assess and improve coordination between the Union and its Member States as regards the security and resilience of existing and new submarine cable infrastructures. This includes a mapping of cables and the related risks. CEF Digital is one of the funding instruments mentioned in the Recommendation to support the deployment of strategic cable projects.
The projects financed under the third set of calls of CEF Digital will significantly contribute to boosting global connections between Europe and Africa (e.g. the Medusa Africa or Canalink-Morocco projects), Middle East (e.g. the BlueMed East project) and Asia (Arctic connectivity), as well as reinforcing the connection 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 is provided in the Annex (PDF).
The new projects will also support connectivity in Outermost Regions and Overseas Countries and Territories, like in the Pacific Ocean (e.g. the NUANUA project), the Caribbean (e.g. the BCA project), the Canary Islands (e.g. the PENCAN-X project) and the Azores-Madeira area (e.g. the Atlantic CAM - CM project).
All beneficiaries of CEF grants are EU-controlled entities and the cables that will be deployed are 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.
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 infrastructures 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.
