Nordic Investment Bank lending to Nordics, Baltics up 26% in 2024
The Nordic Investment Bank saw its lending to the five Nordic and three Baltic countries rise by a quarter last year, as it continued its focus on long-term investments in sustainable energy and productivity.
The NIB disbursed €4.4 billion in 2024, the largest amount in its 50-year history, baring 2020, when lending ballooned as the bank sought to stave off the economic impact of the pandemic.
Lending is forecast to again be strong in 2025, the bank said in its annual report, released on Friday.
Some 20% of disbursements related in some way to energy, reflecting the Nordic-Baltic region’s climate goals and accelerated transition towards energy independence and security.
NIB is an international financial institution jointly owned by the Nordic and Baltic states. It finances projects that improve productivity and benefit the environment of the Nordic-Baltic region. Starting last year, it expanded its mandate to include some defence-related investments.
Amid Swedish fears of Russian expansionism in the Baltic, local authorities in Ystad say they are preparing for a situation in which they receive refugees from Bornholm.
Ystad is a Swedish council, but it is the mainland port for the primary ferry serving the Danish island.
The Swedish military considers Bornholm, along with other Baltic islands, as targets of potential Russian attacks, and that has led Ystad council to include refugees from the island in its civil-defence planning.
Police on Bornholm are responsible for co-ordinating civil defence. In the event of an attack, they say their directions would come from Copenhagen, but Ystad officials have called for co-ordination at the council level with Bornholm.
Source: Ystad Allehanda / TV2/Bornholm
The number of overnight stays on Bornholm grew marginally in 2024, but more visitors outside of the summer season and an increase in the number of visitors from non-core markets suggests that the island’s second-largest industry may be poised for growth in the years to come.
End-of-year statistics published by Destination Bornholm, the island’s tourism board, show the number of overnight stays rose at an annual rate of 0.1% in 2024, to 1,691,257.
Denmark and Germany remained the two largest markets for Bornholm’s 4.1 billion kroner (€550 million) tourism industry. Though fewer Danes and Germans are visiting during the July-August high season, the decline has been somewhat made up by an increase in the number of visitors in shoulder seasons. The result is a tourism season that now spans from March to December.
Destination Bornholm highlighted significant—if small—increases in the numbers of visitors from emerging markets, including France, Italy, the UK and America, that it reckons could make up for the high-season decline.
Finnish and Swedish authorities are investigating a possible breach of the C-Lion 1 undersea cable linking Finland and Germany, Yle, a Finnish news outlet, reports.
The location of the break is reported to be near the island of Gotland in the Swedish economic zone, where a number of subsea cables have been damaged in recent months.
The cause of the break was not immediately known, and it may be due to the previous damage done the cable, a source told Yle.
The C-Lion 1 submarine cable, operated by Cinia, a Finland-based firm, was last damaged on Christmas Day. Finnish authorities believe that break was caused by the Eagle S, an oil tanker suspected of acting on Moscow’s orders. The same cable was also damaged last November.
Source: Yle
Danish manufacturers are at the ready to facilitate the rapid military buildup to the tune of 50bn kroner (€6.7bn) over the next two years announced by the prime minister on Wednesday. But they warn that any return to a military-industrial complex needed to sustain the military for the long-term will require more than just money.
“We should use this an opportunity to think strategically and truly modernise our society,” Lars Sandahl Sørensen, the managing director of DI, a business lobby, said. “Lawmakers won’t be able to avoid making considerable reforms, improving efficiency and investing in new technology and competitiveness.”
The additional funding comes on top of a 10-year, 190bn kroner plan to revamp the military, bringing it in line with Washington’s increasing demands that Nato members spend more on defence.
Denmark currently spends 2.4% percent of its gross domestic product on defence. That places it above the Nato target of 2%, but in January, Mette Frederiksen, the PM, told Danes to be prepared for cuts to some services, as her government looked towards spending 5% of GDP on defence in the coming years
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The additional funding comes after years of cuts have hollowed out the military’s capabilities. And with Washington’s willingness to come to Europe’s aide in the event of a Russian attack now in doubt, Ms Frederiksen said the military would be allowed to fast-track purchases until it was rearmed, by-passing a lengthy and scandal-ridden tendering process.
Correction: We originally stated that the Nato spending target was 3%. Sorry.
A court in Southampton, England, has sentenced the captain of a British cargo vessel and its operator for their roles in a December 2021 Baltic Sea collision that resulted in the deaths of two Danish seamen.
The crash occurred when the Scot Carrier, managed by Intrada Ships Management Ltd, collided with the Karin Høj, a Danish-registered barge, causing it to capsize. Investigators later determined that serious failures in watch-keeping and safety protocols contributed to the accident.
Sam Farrow, the 33-year-old master of the Scot Carrier, was sentenced on 14 Feb to eight months in prison, suspended for 12 months, for failing to prevent the collision, despite being aware that his second officer was unfit for duty. He was also ordered to pay £25,000 (€30,000) in legal costs.
Meanwhile, Intrada Ships Management Ltd was fined £180,000 and ordered to pay £500,000 in legal costs for failing to enforce safety measures that could have prevented the accident.
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In 2022, a Danish court sentenced Mark Wilkinson, the second officer, to 18 months in prison after admitting to gross negligence and intoxication while on duty. Additionally, he received a 12-year ban from entering Denmark and had his maritime license revoked for operations in Danish waters.
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The European Union is mulling a public-private initiative worth “hundreds of millions” of euros to buy ships that can promptly repair subsea cables in case of damage or sabotage, the bloc’s tech chief said.
“We are discussing now with member states what would be the amount that is needed,” Henna Virkkunen, the European Commission’s executive vice-president for technological sovereignty, security and democracy, said on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference. “When it comes to security we see that there’s an urgent need for action.”
In recent months, there have been a string of incidents in the Baltic Sea in which telecommunication and power cables strung across the sea floor between countries were damaged by passing ships. While it is unclear whether these disruptions were accidental or intentional, they have spurred the EU to focus on its infrastructure’s resilience, including by ramping up the continent’s cable-repairing fleet.
Subsea cables carry internet and power connections across countries and continents and their loss can cause disruptions to digital services, including web access and payments, and force telecommunications providers to reroute traffic. More than 95% of global data traffic goes through subsea cables, according to the International Cable Protection Committee.
Source: Bloomberg
The Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania completed a switch from Russia’s electricity grid to the EU’s system on Sunday, severing Soviet-era ties amid heightened security after the suspected sabotage of several subsea cables and pipelines.
Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, hailed the move, years in the planning, as marking a new era of freedom for the region, in a speech at a ceremony in Vilnius alongside the leaders of the three countries and the Polish president.
Debated for many years, the complex switch away from the grid of their former Soviet imperial overlord gained momentum following Moscow’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and its invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
It is designed to integrate the three Baltic states more closely with the EU and to boost the region’s energy security.
Source: Reuters
Nato says it is ready to deploy artificial intelligence and uncrewed vessels in the Baltic as part of its increasing efforts to detect the telltale activity that could indicate that a ship is preparing to damage undersea cables and pipelines.
The military alliance’s hope is that it can use software to process information from satellite imagery, sonar systems and underwater sensors to spot merchant vessels that appear to be acting erratically above undersea infrastructure.
The software, known as Mainsail (a backronym for Multi-Domain Awareness and Insight with AI Layering), has been developed in response to concerns that Russia is engaged in a campaign of damaging undersea infrastructure in and around Europe.
The most dramatic of example of an attack on undersea infrastructure was the 2022 sabatoge of the Nord Stream gas pipeline. The evidence there points to Ukraine, but similar incidents in which Moscow is implicated were recorded before then; in recent months, the number has increased rapidly.
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In November and December of 2024 alone, three separate cables carrying internet data and power between in the Baltic, connecting five Nato members—Estonia, Finland, Germany, Lithuania and Sweden—were severely damaged in incidents.
In most incidents, the damaging vessel—Russian or otherwise—cannot be identified, just as it is impossible to ascertain whether the damage was intentional. Both are often due to a lack of information. As a result, Nato has increased its presence in the Baltic Sea. It is hoped that, where they cannot deter future attacks, they can at least help to clear up which vessel is at fault.
As part of this effort, it is incorporating autonomous vessels that will be able to conduct persistent surveillance over large areas.
Labelled Task Force X, all members of the alliance were invited on to take part, but the hope is that Baltic Rim states will be among those to take the lead.
Nato says the countries taking contributing to the initiative are free to deploy their own assets, making it a proving ground of sorts that puts emerging technologies into active service.
Shipping firms may need to pay a fee to use the Baltic Sea, one of the world’s busiest shipping routes, in order to cover the high costs of protecting undersea cables, Estonia’s defence minister said on Wednesday following a spate of breaches.
Nato said last week it would deploy frigates, patrol aircraft and drones in the Baltic Sea after a series of incidents in which ships have damaged power and communications cables with their anchors in acts of suspected sabotage.
In addition to the patrols, Hanno Pevkur, the defence minister, said countries are weighing other measures to protect cables, including installing sensors to detect anchors dragged across the sea floor or constructing casings or walls around the cables.
But this will come at a cost, and, whether countries or cable operators end up paying for it, consumers may be left ultimately footing the bill through higher taxes or utility costs. Another option, Mr Pevkur said, would be to levy a tax on vessels that sail through the Baltic Sea.
Source: Reuters
Russia, the world’s leading wheat exporter, is expanding its Baltic Sea ports as it aims to boost agricultural exports by 50% by 2030 while reducing dependence on traditional Black Sea routes, officials and executives said, Reuters, a news outlet, reports.
Baltic Sea ports loaded 1.5 million tons of grain last season, a three-fold increase from the previous season but still just 2.4% of overall Russian exports, according to Reuters calculations based on publicly available data.
“Logistically, the Baltic has many advantages for grains exports,” said Darya Snitko, vice president for Gazprombank, one of Russia’s largest banks and one of the biggest lenders to farmers.
She said the ability of Baltic terminals to handle bigger ships should help reduce overall costs.
Source: Reuters