Greece: EUR 10.1m EU CEF Digital Grant to Wings ICT Solutions for Multimodal-5G GR-BG Cross-Border Corridor

Mechanism

Wings ICT Solutions Technologies AE, a Greek ICT/telecoms R&D firm, is the project coordinator for "Multimodal-5G," one of six "5G Corridors" projects selected under the Fourth CEF-Digital Call (total EUR 53 million across the six corridor awards; EUR 389 million across all 56 projects funded in the round, spanning submarine/terrestrial backbone cables, 5G large-scale pilots and EuroQCI quantum-communication infrastructure). The Multimodal-5G project deploys and upgrades 5G RAN/core/transport infrastructure along the GR-BG Corridor — the Greek-Bulgarian section of the TEN-T Orient/East-Med transport corridor — to support connected and automated mobility (CAM) and multimodal freight/logistics use cases across the border. Wings also coordinates a related corridor award, WAVEO (EUR 6.38 million, Romania- Bulgaria section of the same TEN-T corridor), reflecting a broader Commission push to blanket the Orient/East-Med corridor with cross-border 5G coverage.

The Commission's selection decision was formally adopted 3 November 2025; HaDEA's public results announcement followed on 20 November 2025 while grant agreements were being finalised for signature. This is the same CEF Digital funding instrument (administered by HaDEA, successor to INEA) that co-financed the Ireland-Portugal PISCES subsea cable (see 2025-11-03-ireland-mcmahon-design-management-cef-digital-pisces-grant), part of the EU's post-2024 pattern of treating cross-border digital/telecom connectivity as a strategic-infrastructure category warranting direct Commission co-financing rather than leaving buildout entirely to private telecom capex.

Downstream implications

• Extends the EU's TEN-T corridor 5G-coverage mandate to the Greece-

Bulgaria border section, reducing connectivity gaps that have hampered cross-border connected-vehicle and freight-logistics pilots in the region.

• Reinforces Wings ICT Solutions' position as a recurring CEF-Digital

coordinator (four CEF Digital projects to date, including WAVEO and 5G-BRIDGE), a small Greek firm punching above its weight in EU digital- infrastructure procurement.

• Consistent with the EU's broader post-2024 subsea/terrestrial digital-

connectivity resilience push (see EU Cable Security Action Plan, 2025-02-21) that treats intra-EU network buildout, not just external chokepoint hardening, as a policy priority.

Open questions

• Exact grant-agreement signature date and disbursement schedule not yet

published by HaDEA as of filing.

• Whether COSMOTE (Greece) and A1 Bulgaria, Wings' partners on the earlier

5G SEAGUL project (Grant Agreement No. 101094584, a separate 2023-25 award), are also formal partners on Multimodal-5G.