Europe is not starting from zero – reflections from the NEPTUNE project kick-off

“Bring all the puzzle pieces together”

Our opening keynote came from Commander Ilja Iljin of the Finnish Coast Guard. His perspective was firmly operational: what happens when a cable is damaged, an incident is detected, or authorities have to decide what to do next?

The Baltic Sea has provided a painful amount of practical experience in recent years. Iljin described how the response to incidents has developed, including the lessons learned from Balticconnector, C-Lion1 and Eagle S. One of the clearest points was that reacting to an incident is not enough. Prevention, preparedness and the ability to coordinate across organisations and borders matter just as much.

A particularly important issue is information sharing. National authorities, law enforcement, military actors and infrastructure operators all have parts of the picture, but they do not necessarily have access to the same information or the same systems for sharing it.

Iljin put the challenge simply: “Bring all the puzzle pieces together and coordinate the response.”

That phrase stayed with me because it captures a central challenge for NEPTUNE. We do not necessarily need another isolated piece of technology or another initiative working on one part of the problem. We need to connect the capabilities that already exist: sensing with situational awareness, information with decision-making, and detection with an ability to act. Coordination is therefore not an additional layer around resilience. It is part of the resilience capability itself.

We are not starting from zero

John Wrottesley, Executive Director of the European Subsea Cables Association (ESCA), approached the same issue from the industry perspective.

His message was equally important: “We are not starting from zero.” There is already considerable expertise, operational experience, research and policy work in Europe. Industry has been dealing with cable protection, maintenance and repair for decades. Governments and European institutions have developed new policy frameworks. Research projects are testing new technologies and approaches. Operators have developed their own resilience measures and cooperation mechanisms. The problem is that these developments do not always connect.

This is something I have also encountered through the VIGIMARE project (www.vigimare.eu). Laurea is currently coordinating that Horizon Europe project, which focuses on technical approaches to improving the resilience and protection of critical submarine infrastructure. NEPTUNE is a natural continuation of that work, but at a different level. VIGIMARE is developing and testing capabilities; NEPTUNE is looking at the broader European research and innovation landscape and asking what should come next.

That continuity is becoming increasingly important for Laurea. With two Horizon Europe projects now addressing critical submarine infrastructure from complementary angles, we are building expertise not only in the technologies involved, but also in the policy, operational and stakeholder environment around them. VIGIMARE has given us an opportunity to work closely with infrastructure operators and authorities; NEPTUNE allows us to take that practical understanding into a wider European discussion about future priorities. The connection between the two projects also illustrates a broader point. Research does not exist separately from policy and operations. Technologies developed in research projects eventually need to work in operational environments, while operational experience should help shape the next generation of research questions. Building those connections is part of the integration that NEPTUNE is trying to support.

Resilience looks different depending on where you sit

One of the most useful aspects of the kick-off was seeing how differently the same word, resilience, can be understood.

For an authority, resilience may mean being able to detect suspicious activity, establish what has happened and coordinate a response across jurisdictions.

For an operator, it can be much more concrete. Michael Vane-Tempest from Cinia described the importance of having repair capacity, trained personnel, updated documentation and rehearsed procedures. During an actual incident, the operator needs to be able to concentrate on restoring connectivity. If several authorities simultaneously request information or try to manage different aspects of the response, that can itself become a burden.

This is where improved public-private coordination becomes more than a policy ambition. It can have a direct operational effect.

But Vane-Tempest also brought a less comfortable question into the discussion: how much resilience are we prepared to pay for?

Additional monitoring, crisis networks, redundancy and other resilience measures cost money. Operators ultimately have to take those costs into account, and someone has to pay for them. Resilience therefore involves choices and trade-offs, not simply a list of technologies that would be useful to have.

That is an important consideration for NEPTUNE. A research and innovation roadmap cannot simply identify everything that would make submarine cables more resilient. It also needs to help us understand what is necessary, what is feasible, what should be prioritised and where European investment can make the greatest difference. This makes resilience a socio-technical challenge. Technology is essential, but its value depends on the organisations, people, procedures, investments and governance arrangements around it. A sensor that detects an anomaly is only useful if the information reaches someone who can interpret it, decide what to do and act within the available time. A repair capability is only resilient if the wider system allows it to be deployed effectively.

From seeing the problem to being ready to act

Another important point from the kick-off was: situational awareness is not the same as operational readiness. We are getting better at seeing what happens on the surface of the sea. But understanding what is happening around infrastructure on the seabed is considerably more difficult. And even when an incident is detected, information alone does not create a response capability.

Who needs to know? Who has the authority to act? How is information shared across borders? Who coordinates the response? What happens when the incident crosses several jurisdictions or involves several infrastructure operators? These are not questions that can be solved by a sensor. They are governance questions, operational questions and, increasingly, research and innovation questions.

This is also where the discussion with Camino Kavanagh from UNIDIR and King’s College London was valuable. She highlighted the need to look at submarine infrastructure as an ecosystem rather than examining individual technologies in isolation. Detection, accountability, response, ownership, crisis management and the costs associated with resilience are interconnected questions.

For me, this is one of the most important reasons for having an interdisciplinary project like NEPTUNE. The future of submarine cable resilience will not be determined by technology alone. It will depend on whether technological capabilities, operational practices, policy frameworks, investment and governance can function as parts of the same resilience system.

Looking beyond the next incident

European policy has moved quickly in recent years, reflecting a growing recognition that submarine cables are critical infrastructure and that their security cannot be addressed by individual countries or operators alone. The Commission’s 2024 Recommendation on secure and resilient submarine cable infrastructures called for stronger coordination, risk assessment, information sharing and investment at EU and national level. This was followed by the 2025 EU Action Plan on Cable Security, which set out a more comprehensive approach covering prevention, detection, response and recovery, as well as deterrence. In February 2026, the Commission took the next step by publishing a Cable Security Toolbox with concrete measures to mitigate identified risks, together with a first list of Cable Projects of European Interest, identifying areas where strategic investment and improved connectivity should be prioritised (European Commission 2024; European Commission & High Representative 2025; European Commission 2026).

These developments mean that Europe now has an increasingly clear policy foundation for strengthening submarine cable security and resilience. The question is no longer whether the issue has been recognised at European level. The question is how the different policy, research, technological and operational strands can be connected and developed further. These developments provide an important policy direction. NEPTUNE is not intended to duplicate them. The project’s role is to look at what comes next: which technologies, research areas, investments, skills and governance approaches Europe should develop in order to turn those ambitions into longer-term resilience.

This is why we have chosen the three time horizons in NEPTUNE. Some needs are immediate, others require several years of research, testing and deployment. And some of the systems we will need in 2045 may not exist yet. The task is therefore partly about looking beyond today’s problems.

It is tempting, especially after a series of incidents, to ask: How do we prevent the next cable cut? That is an important question, but it is not quite enough. The better question may be: What kind of submarine infrastructure system do we want Europe to have twenty years from now, and what do we need to start doing today to get there? A roadmap is only useful if people recognise themselves in it. This is perhaps my biggest personal takeaway from the kick-off.

A European roadmap can be an impressive document. It can contain technology assessments, investment scenarios, policy recommendations and long lists of research priorities. But it will only have value if the people who are expected to use it recognise their own needs and realities in it. That means listening to operators who have to repair cables in the middle of an incident. It means listening to authorities who have to make decisions with incomplete information. It means understanding what industry can realistically deliver, what researchers can develop, what policymakers can regulate and what European funding can support. And it means accepting that these perspectives will sometimes conflict.

I think that is where NEPTUNE can make a useful contribution. Not by pretending that there is one simple answer to submarine cable resilience, but by creating a structured process for bringing these perspectives together and turning them into shared priorities. Europe is not starting from zero. There is already a considerable amount of knowledge, technology, policy and operational experience. The next step is to connect these existing capabilities more systematically, identify where the gaps and dependencies lie, and agree on what needs to be developed next. For me, that is what the NEPTUNE journey is really about. The roadmap is the outcome. The integration that builds it is the real challenge.

About NEPTUNE

NEPTUNE is a Horizon Europe project coordinated by Laurea University of Applied Sciences and funded by the European Union under the Horizon Europe programme. Running from August 2026 to July 2029, the project brings together 15 organisations from eight European countries to develop a Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda for submarine cable infrastructure. The aim is to identify the research, technology, investment and governance priorities needed to strengthen the resilience, security and sustainability of Europe’s submarine cable infrastructure in the years ahead.

Artificial intelligence tools were used in the preparation of this article for drafting, structuring and language editing. The author is responsible for the content, accuracy and final version of the article.