The European Arctic is, above all, European — and it is time Brussels treated it that way. The European Arctic produces a disproportionate share of Europe’s food security, energy supply and strategic raw materials. The gap between what this region contributes and what it receives in political attention is not a detail. It is a strategic failure.
EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said she didn’t know “what comes next” with US claims on Greenland, but Europe remained sure Russia was a long-term threat.
The EU will double its funding for Greenland and hopes to ramp up cooperation with Nuuk and other overseas countries and territories, the bloc’s international partnerships commissioner told MEPs on Wednesday, after weeks of heightened tensions and the threat of US military action to seize the island.
The Greenland crisis can be used as a strategic trigger to reinvigorate the Nordic enlargement of the European Union, with Iceland and Norway offered membership. Germany, France, and the United Kingdom should also offer bilateral defence treaties to Oslo and Reykjavík — providing a politically significant safety net should Nato become paralysed.
Russia’s eight EU neighbours have declared it “a profound and enduring threat” at a summit in Helsinki, turning up the heat on Ukraine funding talks.
This year has seen stakes in 53 new offshore oil and gas exploration licences awarded by Norway to 20 companies who are set to invest €22.8bn in yet more drilling — up six percent on last year. Yet Norway’s electricity grid runs almost entirely on renewables — because under the Paris Agreement, emissions are counted where fossil-fuels are consumed, not where they are extracted.
When Ursula von der Leyen first announced a revision of the EU’s Arctic policy in Reykjavík this summer, she framed it against the backdrop of growing Chinese and Russian interest in the region. Now Russia is mobilising interests from China, India and other non-Arctic actors to establish or deepen their presence in the region.
A repeat Dutch election, China rare earth exports and von der Leyen in Nordics This WEEKInfluential. Investigative. Independent. EUobserver is a online non-profit news outlet reporting on the European Union.
Denmark has accused US agents of trying to foment separatism in Greenland, reigniting fears over the territory’s future.
Vice president JD Vance toned down US rhetoric on his visit to Greenland on Friday (28 March), but the White House and Kremlin have fuelled fears of an Arctic security crisis.
Iceland and Norway are deeply integrated into the EU’s internal market through the European Economic Area and the Schengen zone, yet formally outside the Union. Both have a history of EU candidacy. Both face a hostile Russia and in increasingly hostile US.
Even the dog race the US second lady is to see has distanced itself from her, amid a growing backlash against the Trump administration’s latest trip to Greenland.
Voters in Greenland chose the social-liberal and pro-business Demokraatit party in a landslide victory on Tuesday, amid a tug-of-war on its future between the US and EU.
As Nordic MEPs, we are well acquainted with the Danish Public Affairs company Rud Pedersen.
Perhaps naively, we had hoped this would been having certain standards. It seems we were mistaken.
Influential. Investigative. Independent. EUobserver is a online non-profit news outlet reporting on the European Union.
The proposed ban on forever chemicals (PFAS) could force the pharmaceutical industry to move production out of Europe, leading to a shortage of 600 critical medicines — or so the industry claims. However, campaigners call for implementation without delay.
Nato’s navies will halt and board ships seen to be harming undersea cables in future, leaders said, as a fresh incident unfolded during their mini-summit in Helsinki.
Six EU countries have called on the European Commission to reduce the $60 price cap on Russian oil.
It is not just outsiders who often fail to recognise Europe’s elasticity — Europeans themselves often make the same mistake, regularly comparing it to an ‘oil tanker’ incapable of changing its course, while in reality, Europe has changed course many times over the past decades.
35 percent of Norwegians now support joining the EU — nearly 30 years after the country’s last referendum on the issue. Opposition to membership has dropped dramatically since 2016, when 70 percent were opposed.
