The European Commission is awarding €5.8 million to set up two Regional Cable Hubs — one in the Baltic Sea and one in the Mediterranean — and has opened a separate €40 million call to expand Europe’s capacity to repair damaged submarine communication cables.
Submarine cables are undersea lines that carry internet and other data, and can also include energy links between countries, the Commission said in a statement on Tuesday.
A Baltic Sea Regional Hub will receive €2.5 million to strengthen surveillance and response arrangements, including links between national and cross-border security operations centres and information-sharing platforms.
Finland will coordinate the hub with Denmark, Germany, Estonia, Latvia and Sweden.
In the Mediterranean, a hub funded with €3.3 million will use shared procedures and a “federated” technology platform — meaning connected systems across countries rather than a single central system — to allow near real-time information exchange, anomaly detection and coordinated incident response.
Italy will coordinate that hub with Greece, Cyprus and Malta.
The European Cybersecurity Competence Centre will manage the calls for proposals and award the grants for the hubs.
€40 million call for cable repair modules
The Commission also launched a €40 million call under the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) Digital programme to support equipment that can be installed quickly on existing repair ships in the event of major cable disruptions.
The funding focuses on the Mediterranean, the Atlantic and other sea basins, with the modules intended to be positioned so they can be deployed when requested by the new regional hubs or other authorities.
Proposals under the €40 million call can be submitted until 8 October 2026 at 17:00 CEST.
The new call follows a €20 million pilot launched in spring 2026 to finance repair modules in the Baltic Sea.
Further funding rounds are planned, with a new call due to open in autumn for regional cable hubs in sea basins not yet covered, or for other EU member states to join the two new hubs.
The Commission said it published its EU Action Plan on Cable Security in February 2025 after incidents involving undersea cables in the Baltic region, and that under the current CEF Digital work programme for 2024–2027, €533 million is allocated to submarine cable projects, with €186 million already awarded to 25 projects.
