The European Commission has convened emergency talks after cyber-attacks disrupted supermarket refrigeration systems across 11 countries, raising concerns that vulnerabilities in the technology underpinning food distribution could expose critical infrastructure to digital sabotage.

Two meetings were held on Tuesday morning to exchange information and coordinate a response, bringing together Commission departments, the EU Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA), Europol and national cyber-crisis experts.

“It is important to exchange information about what happened and how we can best respond together, because this is not limited to one Member State but affects several Member States,” a Commission spokesperson said.

The attacks on Monday affected supermarkets in Italy, Belgium, Germany, Sweden, Portugal, Ireland, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Finland, Estonia and the UK.

Cybercriminals interfered with temperature controls in refrigeration and freezer units, forcing some retailers to remove chilled and frozen products from sale or dispose of spoiled stock.

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The incidents have revived concerns about the security of remotely managed equipment used throughout the food supply chain, from supermarket refrigeration to industrial systems. While investigators have yet to establish responsibility, the geographical spread has raised questions about whether weaknesses in third-party technology could be exploited across national borders.

The Commission spokesperson said national authorities were conducting investigations, adding that “these are not isolated incidents and, of course, we need to be resilient together and prepared for cyber incidents of this kind”.

The latest disruption comes only three weeks after a separate cyber-attack affected as many as 700 grocery stores in France, where food losses were estimated at tens of millions of euros. The recurrence of incidents has increased concern that systems often treated as routine commercial infrastructure could become targets in wider campaigns of digital disruption.

EU food and agriculture commissioner Christophe Hansen said the bloc was taking the attacks very seriously and warned that further disruption could follow.

The incidents have also heightened concerns about hostile states using cyber operations against essential services as part of broader hybrid campaigns. However, no confirmed attribution links the supermarket attacks to a government or a single perpetrator.

Britain has also faced attacks on its food industry, with the meat-processing sector among the businesses affected. Paul Chichester, director of operations at the National Cyber Security Centre, said the impact on UK companies has so far been limited, but confirmed the agency is working with affected organisations.

The incidents have exposed the risks posed by internet-connected equipment managed remotely, particularly where security arrangements have not kept pace with technological change. A breach affecting a service provider can potentially disrupt several businesses that rely on the same systems, multiplying the consequences of a single intrusion.

In Italy, the government of Giorgia Meloni convened a meeting with intelligence chiefs, although officials said the impact was “currently very limited”. At least four Co-op supermarkets in Sicily and one business in Tuscany were affected, the national cybersecurity agency said.

Meloni’s office said the businesses hit was “mostly still equipped with obsolete security systems, with interfaces directly exposed to the internet and inadequate authentication mechanisms”. It added that most of the food distribution chain had more up-to-date protections that could resist such attacks.

Belgium was among the hardest-hit countries, with dozens of supermarkets reporting refrigeration failures. Federal prosecutors have opened an investigation.

In Ireland, 13 SuperValu stores were affected by what parent company Musgrave Group described as a cyber-incident. “Replenishment of chilled and frozen ranges in the affected stores is well under way,” a spokesman said on Monday.

A small number of independent shops in the Netherlands also experienced disruption. The country’s largest supermarket chain, Albert Heijn, was forced to take several services offline last month following a separate cyber-attack.

In Germany, refrigeration systems at Rewe Büsken in the west of the country were disrupted after an attack on equipment provider Danfoss, the company told the BBC. The systems had returned to operation by Monday afternoon.

Portugal’s Mosqueteiros group said seven Intermarché stores had been affected by an incident that “appears to have targeted an external service provider responsible for managing the refrigeration systems”.

Swedish retailer ICA reported problems in “a limited number” of stores but did not confirm that they resulted from a cyber-attack. The country’s cybersecurity agencies said they were monitoring the situation. Finland’s Kesko said it detected irregular temperatures in a few smaller grocery stores and was investigating.

In Estonia, at least one supermarket was targeted by hackers who raised refrigeration-unit temperatures to 50C, public broadcaster ERR reported.

The incidents underline how the security of food supplies increasingly depends on systems that consumers rarely see but retailers rely on every day. Supermarket fridges may seem far removed from the networks that govern national infrastructure, but disruptions can quickly translate into wasted stock, empty shelves and financial losses.

For European authorities, the challenge is now to establish whether the attacks exploited common weaknesses in equipment or service providers, while ensuring that retailers and governments can respond collectively. The Commission’s crisis meetings mark an attempt to share intelligence across borders, but the investigations have yet to establish the scale of the threat or who is behind it.