A speculation on the issue of responsibility for the Nord Stream incident should be avoided and the EU member states need to focus on proper preparation to protect their regional infrastructure in case of contingencies, European Parliament President Roberta Metsola said on Friday.
"Without speculating, I would say, without creating panic, we have to wait to see who the culprits were. But I also think that we need to be better prepared for activities such as these in our sees, not only in the Baltic Sea but also elsewhere. And for that we are going to be the ones who are waiting and asking for the results to be seen," Metsola said ahead of the informal EU summit on the sidelines of the European Political Community summit in Prague.
On September 26, a rapid gas pressure drop and leakage were registered on gas pipelines of the Russian-led Nord Stream network that runs under the Baltic Sea from Russia to Germany. According to Sweden, Germany and Denmark, the incidents could be a result of sabotage. The operator, Nord Stream AG, said it was impossible to estimate a time frame for repair work.
On September 30, the UN Security Council held an urgent meeting on Nord Stream pipelines. While all members of the council condemned the suspected sabotage as unacceptable, Russia later ended up rejected from partaking in the international investigation of the incident.
The Russian Prosecutor General's Office has been investigating the pipeline incidents as acts of international terrorism.
“The acts of sabotage against Nord Stream pipelines have shown how vulnerable our energy infrastructure is. For the first time in recent history, it has become a target,” European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen told the European Parliament on Wednesday (5 October).
Four leaks were detected last week on the two Nord Stream pipelines that connect Russia to Germany through the Baltic Sea.
An investigation is now underway, but Western countries say they are most likely the result of deliberate action with Sweden and Denmark having written a letter to the United Nations Security Council.
EU leaders are set to discuss the issue on Friday at an informal summit in Prague. European countries have already stepped up security measures to safeguard energy supplies in the North Sea and off the coast of Italy.
The incidents have prompted some countries to send in military to secure potentially vulnerable energy systems.
“To many in Brussels it came as a surprise that such ‘stress tests’ seem not to have been conducted more regularly, or that the EU’s executive was lacking the situation awareness to outright name their critical infrastructure across the bloc,” one EU official told EURACTIV under the condition of anonymity.
This would also be the consequence of the bloc for years “living in a garden of peace” and not being able to consider anticipate potential attacks could become reality, the EU official added.
The EU’s recently adopted military strategy, the Strategic Compass, for the first time made a veiled reference to the changed geopolitical situation in the EU’s neighbourhood affecting “the security of our citizens, our critical infrastructure and the integrity of our borders.”
However, it mostly refers to cyber threats
“We must also be able to swiftly and forcefully respond to cyberattacks, such as state-sponsored malicious cyber activities targeting critical infrastructure and ransomware attacks,” the Strategic Compass states.
EU’s five-point plan The EU’s executive is in the process of updating its 2008 critical infrastructure directive. Th revised directive will seek to cover 11 risk areas, including natural disasters, terrorist attacks, internal threats, and sabotage, but also public health emergencies like the recent COVID-19 pandemic.
The new law is slated to come into force in 2024, but von der Leyen stated that “we can and should already now be working on this basis.”
For that, the EU chief announced she will soon lay out a five-point plan covering different aspects of EU readiness.
Europe needs to be better prepared, she said, pointing to new legislation to strengthen the resilience of critical EU entities, due to be voted on in the European Parliament next week.
The bloc would also need to “stress test” its infrastructure, first those related to energy supply but also “other high-risk sectors” including offshore digital cables and electricity grids.
“We don’t have to wait till something happens but we need to make sure that we’re prepared and therefore we need those stress tests,” she said.
“We need to identify whether we have weak points and where these weak points are and, of course, we have to prepare our reaction to sudden disruptions. What are we doing then? Are all the information chains in place? Is everybody informed? Does this emergency scenario really work then in our Single Market?,” she told the European Parliament.
Alongside this, Europe should also increase its capacity to respond, including by supporting impacted areas with fuel and generators, through the civil protection mechanism.
The alleged sabotage of Nord Stream has also raised questions about how such infrastructure can be protected.
Von der Leyen highlighted the use of satellites in order to monitor the situation and emphasised the need to strengthen coordination with NATO.
“We have these satellites in place, we have the capacity to do the surveillance to detect potential threats, so this is also a matter of prevention and awareness,” she said.
NATO raises preparedness
NATO’s northern members and partners have already begun tightening security.
“All currently available information indicates that this is the result of deliberate, reckless, and irresponsible acts of sabotage,” the North Atlantic Council said in a statement last week.
It also said it had committed “to prepare for, deter and defend against the coercive use of energy and other hybrid tactics by state and non-state actors.”
“Any deliberate attack against Allies’ critical infrastructure would be met with a united and determined response,” it added.
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