Finland has seen increasing threats to underwater infrastructure in the Baltic Sea region in recent years, the Nordic country’s Environment and Climate Minister Kai Mikkanen said today.

Finland and Estonia signed an agreement today to increase the security of their shared undersea infrastructure, which includes telecommunications and power cables as well as the Balticconnector gas pipeline, which was damaged a year ago.

Finnish police are still investigating the pipeline incident while Estonian police are leading an investigation into simultaneous damage to undersea telecommunications links

Police in the two countries have not yet released their findings.

“In recent years we have clearly noticed that threats to the security of energy transmission channels are unfortunately increasing, especially in the undersea area of ​​the Gulf of Finland and in the Baltic Sea region as a whole,” Mikkanen said.

According to the minister, the strengthening of cooperation between the two countries means that they will join forces to strengthen technical monitoring, patrols and the possibilities of restoring underwater infrastructure.