337
Arctic Yearbook 2015
deferred the controversial questions regarding the role of Observers and whether the EU should be
granted Observer status to 2017 (Arctic Council 2015). This shows that the states were unable to reach
an agreement about one of the more controversial matters in current Arctic Council politics and it
seems reasonable to argue that the Ukraine crisis added an additional layer of complexity to the matter.
However, had one of the states wanted to halt Arctic cooperation, protesting or blocking discussion
of the Observer question altogether would have been a natural course of action. Bilateral cooperation
a