This year, the Arctic has moved to the center of the geopolitical agenda. Most recently, U.S. President Donald Trump renewed his quest to aqcuire Greenland, putting unprecedented pressure on a NATO over control of the territory.
Greenland sits astride key routes linking the Arctic to the North Atlantic and holds some of the world's largest rare earth deposits. Yet for years, Europe treated the region as a distant environmental concern rather than a strategic priority. That complacency has left the European Union reacting to events rather than shaping them.
The European Union is now revising its 2021 Arctic policy, a process that will define its engagement in the region for the next decade.
As Russia's war in Ukraine continues, defense spending rises and competition over resources and shipping routes intensifies, Europe risks viewing the region through a security lens alone.
In doing so, it could squander a rare opportunity to champion de-escalation through diplomacy, science and a rules-based approach to regional governance.
Not just a matter of security
I came to politics in Athens in the 1970s, when the democratic order had collapsed, and learned early that rebuilding it takes far longer than tearing it down.
Later, as European Commissioner for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries, I saw the same truth at sea: ambiguity over shared resources fuels conflict, while clear rules defuse it. By putting science first, the number of healthy fish stocks in Europe grew from a handful to dozens.
Here is what the security lens misses. Today's fiercest competition is over territory and coastal waters, from Greenland to the shipping lanes along Russia's northern coast.
As the ice retreats, that competition threatens to spill into the high seas beyond any country's jurisdiction: the Central Arctic Ocean, an area the size of the Mediterranean around the North Pole. Industry, in particular, is increasingly looking north.
An industrialized Central Arctic Ocean is not just an ecological concern; it is a threat multiplier that intensifies competition and strategic risk.
Acting with precaution in the high seas first, where the great powers have the least to lose and the most reason to cooperate, could build the trust and forums needed to ease tensions across the wider region.
Securing the Central Arctic Ocean Fisheries Agreement
There is already a precedent. Five years ago, the EU signed the Central Arctic Ocean Fisheries Agreement with nine other parties, including the U.S., Russia and China, agreeing to pause commercial fishing in these waters until at least 2037 to allow for research. In June, representatives from the signatories gathered again in Brussels for the latest talks under the deal.
Pausing commercial fishing while science catches up may not sound radical. Getting the U.S., Russia and China to sign the same document, and stick to it through these turbulent years, is.
That makes it both a commitment to honor and a model to replicate.
The EU should enforce the moratorium until research is complete, keep the signatories united and properly fund the agreement's joint research program, while ensuring Arctic Indigenous peoples remain genuine participants, as they were in shaping the agreement itself.
The same logic can extend to the pressures now building. Europe already leads on precaution through its cautious position on seabed mining beyond national jurisdiction.
That approach can also be extended to shipping through the Central Arctic Ocean, a prospect still years from viability and fraught with economic, environmental and geopolitical risk.
The review of the EU Arctic Strategy is a test of whether Europe can turn its stated commitments to precaution, respect for international rules, international cooperation and climate leadership into durable policy.
Beyond ships and troops, the Central Arctic Ocean offers an opportunity to rethink security. By building shared frameworks that bring nations peacefully around the same table, Brussels can prevent a thawing ocean from becoming a free-for-all.
What Europe decides this year will help determine whether the Central Arctic Ocean becomes the next arena of great-power competition or remains proof that a different approach is still possible.
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