Briefing Note
Exploring Reasons & Remedies for the EU’s
Incapability to Devise an “Arctic Policy”:
The Quest for Coherence
Adam Stępień & Andreas Raspotnik
The European Commission and the European External Action Service (EEAS) are, at the time of
publishing of this year’s Arctic Yearbook, working on a new policy statement concerning the EU’s
Arctic policy. The new communication, requested by the Council of the European Union, is likely to
surface in the first half of 2016, slightly passing the original 2015 deadline (EU-Council 2014). In this
Briefing Note, we focus on the formulation of the EU Arctic policy as an overarching framework,
which so far has found its expression in declaratory statements (communications) from the
Commission and the Union’s High Representative. Two main questions shine out: Why has it been
so difficult to formulate a statement that meets expectations of analysts and Arctic actors and are we
likely to see it finally occurring in 2016?
2016 would mark eight years since the Commission’s first communication on Arctic matters. Eight
years during which the geopolitical “hot” Arctic turned into a realistic “cold” Arctic. Eight years during
Adam Stępień is a researcher at the Arctic Centre in Rovaniemi. Andreas Raspotnik is Senior Analyst at The Arctic
Institute in Washington, D.C.