The University of Turku/ResQU2 project and the European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats (Hybrid CoE) with its Communities of Interest (COI) on Vulnerabilities and Resilience organized a workshop on ‘Hybrid Scenarios in the Baltic Sea’. The workshop took place in Velkua, in the Archipelago Sea on 28–29 May 2019. The event convened together some 25 experts from EU and NATO institutions, civil and military officials from 7 nations, academia representatives, legal experts, as well as security of supply and transport specialists.
The workshop took a closer look on emerging challenges to Sea Lines of Communication in the Hybrid Threat environment in the Baltic Sea by reflecting them against the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, Maritime Law and International Humanitarian Law. In addition, a stock was taken on business models, patterns in the shipping industry and on wider logistics chains, as well as the existing community-level approaches to the topic.The event included a TTX consisting of identified potential hybrid threat scenarios with realistic charts and shipping routes. Potential proactive and countering measures were explored, especially at the international political level. The HybridCoE will collect the results of the workshop together and publish them in a handbook on maritime hybrid threats later this year. Professor Lauri Ojala represented ResQU2 in the workshop.