NATO and the EU are forming a task group to strengthen vital infrastructure protection in response to last year's attack on the Nord Stream gas pipelines.

NATO and the EU are forming a task group to strengthen vital infrastructure protection in response to last year's attack on the Nord Stream gas pipelines and Russia's "weaponization of energy," the organisations' leaders said on Wednesday.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the sabotage of the Russia-to-Germany pipelines in the Baltic Sea in September demonstrated the necessity "to address this new sort of danger".

"This is a task group where our specialists from NATO and the European Union will work for hand in hand to identify important concerns to our essential infrastructure, to look at the strategic weaknesses that we do have," she said in Brussels with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg.

Western and Russian politicians have swapped allegations over the Nord Stream blasts, but investigators in Sweden and Denmark have not named any likely perpetrators.

Von der Leyen stated that the task team will first provide recommendations on transportation, energy, digital, and space infrastructure.

According to Western diplomats, the Nord Stream assaults and unexpected gas cuts from Russia since the start of Moscow's war in Ukraine have exposed how reliant many EU and NATO nations are on critical infrastructure and Russian energy.

Stoltenberg said the task force will be part of expanded NATO-EU collaboration soon before meeting with von der Leyen's Commission to discuss security.

"Resilience and vital infrastructure protection are crucial components of our combined efforts, as we have seen with President Putin's weaponization of energy and... the destruction of the North Stream pipelines," he stated.

"We want to collaborate on ways to make our vital infrastructure, technology, and supply chains more robust to prospective attacks, as well as take action to reduce any vulnerabilities."

(investing.com, reuters.com)