“The security aspect is a serious issue,” Prime Minister Rutte said upon arrival at a North Sea summit with other European leaders in Ostend, Belgium. According to Rutte, increasing NATO and EU maritime patrols, among other things, can play a role in combating security risks and the security measures taken by these countries must be coordinated.

Russian ships are catching up

The reason for the expansion of cooperation between the Netherlands and the other three countries was because of warnings from intelligence services about Russian espionage and possible sabotage plans in the North Sea.

Late last year, the Netherlands expelled a Russian ship in the North Sea that stopped at a wind farm. According to the MIVD military intelligence service, Russia is trying to map “what the Dutch energy supply is like” to see how they can sabotage it, MIVD director Jan Swillens said in late February.

At the end of last week, Swillens told RTL Nieuws: “Russia does not have one ship, but a whole program designed to map in particular underwater infrastructure, gas pipelines, oil pipelines and internet cables, so that they can act disruptively there.”

With his statement, the MIVD boss confirmed the findings of investigative journalists from the Danish, Norwegian, Swedish and Finnish public broadcasters.

The mysterious attacks at the end of September last year on the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea are also still fresh in people’s minds. Until last summer, gas was transported from Russia to Germany via Nord Stream 1. Nord Stream 2 was never officially commissioned. When the pipeline was blown, Russia had shut down Nord Stream 1.

Leaders, and their line ministers, will agree at the North Sea Summit, which is attended by a total of nine countries, that the region will become a major green power plant.

Special sessions will be devoted to security aspects of critical infrastructure. The Netherlands is expected to sign agreements on this matter with Belgium, Norway and the UK.

According to climate minister Rob Jetten, who was also at the summit, designers and implementers of new infrastructure need to think differently and consider security from the start.