The EU plans a submarine cable to link Greenland with Europe

The strategy is not only about connectivity: it also covers maritime security, climate and resources. But the Pan-Arctic cable is one of its most concrete measures, and it touches infrastructure already exposed to sabotage. The submarine-cable map helps show which routes exist today and which do not.

What happened

The strategy, entitled ‘Europe's Northern Neighbourhood’, is built around four priorities: security and resilience, climate change, prosperity and opportunities for Arctic communities. Security comes first, a change from the previous approach, which was more focused on the climate. The document proposes a maritime security centre and an ‘Arctic Cable Hub’ to monitor, protect and coordinate repairs to cables in the North Atlantic.

On the digital side, the Commission says the EU will support ‘secure, resilient submarine cable connectivity through the Pan-Arctic Cable, linking Greenland directly to Europe’. The long-term vision is a route that, via Canada, would connect Europe with Japan and South Korea; government communications would use the IRIS² constellation. The Commission notes that the Arctic is warming nearly four times faster than the global average.

Funding does not start from scratch. The EU has allocated €54.7 million to the Tusass Connect project, a cable between Aasiaat and Qaqortoq intended to link north and central west Greenland with the south, where most people live. Euronews puts the total already committed to Greenlandic connectivity at €107 million, and a €200 million Global Gateway package for 2026 and 2027 was announced in September.

The context is geopolitical. Kaja Kallas cited Russia's military build-up in the north, drone incursions, GPS jamming and cable sabotage, according to AFP. Ursula von der Leyen described the Arctic, in remarks reported by Al Jazeera, as ‘one place where the tectonic plates of geopolitics are colliding’.

The map: what exists and what is planned

The map brings together 24 cables: 23 trunk routes in service, in blue, and the Pan-Arctic Cable, still planned, in orange. Each line follows a curve between official landing points; the planned cable's route is indicative because the Commission has not fixed it. It is not a complete inventory: it is a selection of trunk routes that shows the geography of intercontinental connections.

In the North Atlantic, four cables link the United States to Europe: MAREA (2018, 6,600 km), Dunant (2020, 6,600 km), Grace Hopper (2021, 6,300 km) and Amitié (2022, 6,800 km). All land in western Europe; none in Greenland.

Towards Asia, the map shows the concentration of the Red Sea corridor. AAE-1 (2017, 25,000 km), Europe India Gateway (2010, 15,000 km), SEA-ME-WE 6 (2025, 19,000 km) and 2Africa (2024, 45,000 km) have landing points in Egypt and trace that passage between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean. It is the route the EU wants to diversify. The map does not prove that a new path is viable, but it does show why Brussels talks about redundancy.

How to read the map

Each line is a cable. Blue marks a cable in service and orange marks the planned Pan-Arctic Cable; its route is an approximation, not a confirmed path. Click a cable to open a card with its length, landing points and the countries it connects. Zoom out and the flat map becomes a 3D globe.

Data for cables in service comes from TeleGeography and submarinecablemap.com (December 2024); information on the Pan-Arctic Cable comes from the European Commission (20 October 2026). Routes are interpolated along great circles between official landing points, so they are an approximation: they do not reproduce every vertex of the real cable or its depth. Length is the figure declared by the source.

What the map does not say

The map does not measure traffic, capacity, latency or ownership. Nor does it show which routes are operational, which are under construction or how much repairs cost. The year of commissioning is not the current status: a cable may have changed owner or route since then.

Greenland's absence does not mean it has no connection: the Greenland Connect system links Iceland, Greenland and Newfoundland, but it is not part of this selection. The orange Pan-Arctic line is only an approximation: the Commission has not yet fixed a route, budget or timetable, according to Euronews. Nor can the map say whether the cable will be viable or who will pay for it.

What comes next

The immediate calendar points to the EU-Canada summit on 29-30 October, where Brussels wants to deepen Arctic cooperation, including submarine infrastructure. The Commission will keep supporting the link with Greenland, but has not published a timetable. The ‘Arctic Cable Hub’ would be the first institutional step; its mandate and budget will depend on member states.

With around 90% of data traffic between Europe and Asia passing through the Red Sea and straits such as Bab el-Mandeb, according to heise online, the question is no longer only where demand lies, but which routes are worth having so as not to depend on a single passage.