Estonian Defense Minister proposes a tax on the use of the Baltic Sea

Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur suggested charging ships for passing through the Baltic Sea to cover the cost of protecting undersea cables. This was reported by Reuters on January 29.

According to Pevkur, in addition to patrols, other measures are being considered to protect the cables, such as installing sensors to detect anchors that could damage the seabed and building protective sheathing or walls around the cables.

Another possible measure, according to the minister, is to impose a tax on ships crossing the Baltic Sea, through which eight NATO countries and Russia pass.

"Let's say when you go to the airport, you have a landing fee, you have an airport fee, and that is paid for in the ticket," Pevkur said.

He added that various options are being discussed and the countries will need to come to a common decision.

An emergency outage of the EstLink 2 DC cable occurred between Estonia and Finland on December 25, 2024. The Estonian electricity and gas grid operator Elering said that the cause of the incident was unknown.

On December 26, Finnish police stopped the Kukapo Islands-flagged tanker Eagle S on suspicion of a cable break in the Baltic. The head of the police said that the agency had reason to believe that the tanker was involved in the cable breakage.

On the same day, Estonian broadcaster ERR reported that three more submarine cables between Finland and Estonia were interrupted. Elisa Eesti AS and CITIC Telecom CPC, the companies that own the cables, promptly started working on fixing the problems, and the outages had no noticeable impact on users. Nevertheless, the Estonian government decided to hold an emergency meeting about the incident.