Evolution of the European Union’s discourse on security in the Arctic region

Abstract

The Arctic was a relevant hotspot during the Cold War. Years later, the global warming derived from climate change is producing transformations that reveal different possibilities to exploit the Arctic’s wealth: natural resources, new trade routes, and tourist activities. This range of opportunities has raised tensions among Russia and United States and European countries. Since 2008, the European Union has been developing its own policy for the Arctic space, being security one of the main challenges that it has to tackle as an international organization. This paper, examines this European Arctic policy through the Conventions Theory to identify the evolution of security issues in the European Union's discourse on the Arctic territory. In order to analyze the situation, we use N-Vivo software to encode the content of fundamental documents published by the EU up to 2021 concerning the Arctic region. The results reflect how security and defense issues have gone from being of secondary importance to being one of the fundamental axes of the current European Arctic policy.