The EU and its Arctic spirit: Solving Arctic climate change from home?

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The EU’s Arctic Policy: Between Vision and Reality. CEPOB #5.19, August 2019

> The EU’s Arctic policy statements have so far been primarily aggregations of existing actions, wrapped in high-level rhetoric. > EU policy-makers have not yet developed a convincing Arctic narrative to broadly engage the EUropean public in Arctic matters. > Although no dramatic changes took place in the Arctic in the last years, security questions and high politics have become more visible. > The current main themes of the EU’s Arctic policy – climate, sustainable development and international cooperation – should be kept. Climate change should not be the only pillar of the EU’s Arctic engagement. Policymakers need to propose concrete future-oriented actions for issues such as marine litter. At the same time, the EU should not openly raise security questions. > To operationalize its policies, the EU should re-consider the current institutional set-up of its Arctic policy, including ways to involve the European Parliament and making internal long-term coordination more effective

The EU’s new Arctic Communication: not-so-integrated, not-so-disappointing?

The new Joint Communication on “An integrated European Union policy for the Arctic” was published on 27 April 2016. The document generally follows the lines drawn in previous EU Arctic policy statements: climate and environment, sustainability and regional cooperation. However, the policy update also shows evolution of the EU’s understanding of its place in the changing Arctic economic, environmental and political landscape. The Communication does not deliver on the promise included in its title, namely that it proposes to establish a truly “integrated EU Arctic policy”. The EU Arctic policy encompasses too many diverse issues – both internal and external – and it is too marginal for the EU in order to realistically aim for the envisaged integration that is linking different sectors together.publishedVersio

The European Union and its Northern Frontier : EUropean Geopolitics and its Arctic Context

The present study explores EUropean geopolitical agency in a distinct spatio-temporal context: the Arctic region of the early 21st century. Thus, it provides an in-depth analysis of the European Union’s process to construct EUropean legitimacy and credibility in its ‘Northern Neighbourhood’ between 2008 and 2014. Embedded in a conceptual and methodological framework using critical geopolitics, this study assesses the strategic policy reasoning of the EU and the implicit geopolitical discourses that guide and determine a particular line of argumentation so as to claim a ‘legitimate’ role in the Arctic and accordingly construct a distinct ‘EUropean Arctic space’. In doing so, it establishes a clearer picture on the (narrated) regional interests of the EU and the related developed policy and concrete steps taken in order to get hold of these interests. Eventually, the analysis gets to the conceptual bottom of what exactly fashioned the EU with geopolitical agency in the circumpolar North. As a complementary explanation, this study provides a thick description of the area under scrutiny – the Arctic region – in order to explicate the systemic context that conditioned the EU’s regional demeanour and action. Elucidated along the lines of Arctic history and identity, rights, interests and responsibility, it delineates the emergence of the Arctic as a region of and for geopolitics. The findings indicate that the sui generis character of the Arctic as EUropean neighbourhood essentially determined the EU’s regional performance. It explicates that the Union’s ‘traditional’ geopolitical models of civilian or normative power got entangled in a fluid state of Arctic affairs: a distinct regional system, characterised by few strong state actors with pronounced national Arctic interests and identities, and an indefinite local context of environmental changes, economic uncertainties and social challenges. This study applies critical geopolitics in a Political Science context and essentially contributes to a broader understanding of EU foreign policy construction and behaviour. Ultimately, it offers an interdisciplinary approach on how to analyse EU external action by explicitly taking into account the internal and external social processes that ultimately condition a certain EUropean foreign policy performance

Economic sanctions disruption on international trade patterns and global trade dynamics : Analyzing the effects of the European Union’s sanctions on Russia

Author's accepted version (postprint).This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Routledge (Taylor & Francis group) in Journal of East-West Business on 12/10/2020.Available online: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10669868.2020.1830912acceptedVersio

Introduction: Climate Change and Resilient Fisheries Management

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The Blue Economy in the Arctic Ocean: Governing Aquaculture in Alaska and North Norway

In the Arctic, the concept of the blue economy is increasingly dominating discussions on regional development. This entails utilising the region’s ocean-based resources in a sustainable way — both from a global and local level, as well as from an environmental and economic perspective. A crucial aspect in this development is how blue activities are regulated. The UNCLOS-regime plays a vital part in providing the mechanisms and procedures for states to manage marine resources more broadly. However, the predominant mode of governance for Arctic maritime activities will remain unilateral management by each of the coastal states. Thus, the national and local legal and political framework needs to be mapped. In this article we will explore and explain how aqua/-mariculture is governed in the United States (Alaska) and Norway (North Norway). This will be done by examining how parameters for blue economic projects are defined and determined at the international, regional, national and local governance level. Thus, our article will illustrate the complexity behind the blue economy. There is no such thing as one blue economy and no such thing as one Arctic, but it is still possible to find common ground and avenues for knowledge and best practice exchange. By this we will bring the academic and political discussions about the blue economy on the right track