OSCE Permanent Council No. 1560

1.    The European Union thanks the United Kingdom for raising this important issue. The EU is seriously concerned by the revealed Russian submarine activities in the Northern Atlantic. Seabed critical infrastructure such as cables or pipelines is an essential backbone of connectivity, economy and security of supply. 
2.    Acts of sabotage and disruption of critical infrastructure form part of Russia’s destabilising hybrid campaigns against the EU and its Member states and we strongly condemn any attempts to threaten the physical or digital security of our critical infrastructure.
3.    The EU and its Member States remain prepared and will act on such threats irrespective of their origin, scale and intensity. We remain determined to further strengthen protection and resilience of our seabed infrastructure, including through the EU Action Plan on Cable Security presented in early 2025. In this context, we also want to highlight that on 30 March EU Foreign Ministers have updated the mandates of the EU’s two naval missions EUNAVFOR ASPIDES and EUNAVFOR ATALANTA to collect and share information on suspicious activities related to critical submarine infrastructure in their respective area of operation. 
4.    We stand in solidarity with the United Kingdom and will continue to work closely with our friends and partners to foster security and resilience of critical infrastructure against hybrid threats on land, under sea, as well as in the digital sphere. 

Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Iceland, Republic of Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Ukraine align themselves with this statement.