The EU’s New Arctic Strategy: Three Questions for Norway

On 20 October, the European Commission and the High Representative launched their new Joint Communication on Arctic matters – this time allegedly being more “strategic” about their intentions, as also visible in the document’s very title: Europe’s Northern Neighbourhood: A New Strategy for the Arctic.

Note the word order here. “Northern Neighbourhood” comes before “Arctic”. This might be an academic “chicken or egg” discussion only, or it potentially says a lot about where the Union’s attention now lies: not in the complex space that is “the Arctic” but rather in its northern proximity.

The introduction of the document goes even further and claims that the strategy “redefines what the Arctic means for Europe and what Europe means for the Arctic”. That is not only a deliberate break with every update since the EU launched its Arctic policy in 2008, but it might also indicate a more coherent policy approach to a space often overlooked by European policymakers.

Whether this claim of strategic redefinition holds up depends, however, on the answers to three questions that also matter for Norway – what neighbourhood, what strategy and who owns it. 

What kind of neighbourhood?

Calling the Arctic a “neighbourhood” is not a cartographic endeavour; it is a functional one. It introduces the idea of a political architecture – a structured framework for cooperation with “like-minded partners” – from Norway and the United Kingdom to Iceland and Greenland, to Canada and the United States – defined by shared values and strategic interests rather than by proximity.

While this is truly a new way of conceptualising the EU being in the Arctic, the “neighbourhood” as a concept also comes with some historical and institutional baggage.

This is particularly relevant in a complex space such as the Arctic – with an ocean six times bigger than the Mediterranean if one is interested in a simple comparison between “neighbourhoods” – where the delineation of being a backyard, a neighbourhood or a frontier has always been a blurry one, at least from a EUropean perspective.

However, and precisely because of the Union’s controversial neighbourhood-legacy, defining the Arctic as a neighbourhood should matter for Norway. While the EEA Agreement ties Norway closely to the EU, it gives no seat where frameworks like this one are decided and filled with content and money.

And while the strategy mentions a recently established bilateral Arctic Dialogue between the EU and Norway as venue for tackling concrete challenges in the Arctic (exemplified in the document through “domain awareness, the protection of critical infrastructure and territorial integrity”), Norway has no formal say in how the Northern Neighbourhood will be put into practice.

Moreover, what such a partnership would mean in legal, institutional or financial terms is left completely open, which brings us to the second question. 

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What kind of strategy?

What tends to get lost in our short attention spans is that the EU has quite an Arctic policy history with published Arctic policy documents in 2008, 2012, 2016 and 2021. Each sounded more ambitious than the last, but none came with the political backing or long-term funding a real strategy needs.

After reading the 2026 policy – sorry strategy – one could argue this still reads more like a wish list of what Europe can and wants to do in the Arctic. Yet a strategy is not a report or a document, it is a process. This time, though, such a process might also come with more political support. In September, fourteen Member States met in Rovaniemi and called for a more strategic and proactive EU role in the European Arctic.

At the European Council on 15–16 October, the heads of state and government underlined the strategic importance of the region. This might only be the result of the “Greenland momentum” and Donald Trump being Donald Trump. However, it could also be a push at both supranational and Member State level to think more coherently, more strategically about the North.

For Norway – a state that is in and out of the EU at the same time (to philosophically refer to a famous Austrian and his cat) – the key question is if the strategy offers anything concrete it can work with: specific initiatives, mechanisms, money. Here the document is fairly frank and offers quite some options – via the narrated idea “from vigilance via preparedness to responsiveness” – for Norway to engage with Europe:

Think of above-mentioned Arctic Dialogue; Norway’s inclusion as a partner in the European Defence Fund’s Arctic-ready projects; or the push to finally open up IRIS² and the planned ESA Arctic Space Centre in Tromsø to Norwegian participation.

Moreover, the document also describes the Northern Neighbourhood as something the EU is “moving towards”, not something that already exists. This offers quite some entry points for Norway, which from the very beginning of the EU’s Arctic policymaking process, has quite a record of shaping European Arctic policy the Norwegian way.

With the current energy-relationship and EU Member States importing more Norwegian gas than ever or Norway’s key role in future space capabilities, ocean monitoring, potentially also computing capacity (#Narvik) or research (#IPY), Norway does have real leverage it could use to its advantage.

However, for that to be used, Norway will have to outline what the country can offer to the neighbourhood and via its “strategic” partnership with the EU, which then brings us to the final point: ownership. 

Who owns the strategy?

Every EU Arctic document since 2008 has run into the same problem. Member States with strong Arctic interests, basically its three Nordic Member States (Finland, Sweden and Denmark), have been reluctant to hand political ownership to Brussels, while those without such interests have seen little reason to prioritise a region far away.

Russia’s war against Ukraine or the Greenland momentum might have brought some nuances to this equation. If so, what does this mean for Norway? From a Nordic-European perspective, Norway is still by far the most “Arctic state” out of the five, both from a historical and identity perspective, as well as of how the policy (the High North as most important strategic area for Norway) feeds into Norwegian foreign policy.

Hence, Norway has some substantial leverage to use to “define” the Northern Neighbourhood – even from outside the EU. Several parts of the new strategy line up with Norwegian interests: closer security cooperation, new partnerships, and treating resources and transport links as part of economic security.

How much of Norway’s leverage is actually used will depend on whether Norwegian policymakers see the Northern Neighbourhood as an opportunity or a complication.