The Arctic as a Space of Peace and Security in European Union Policy: a Shift in Strategic Perception

Over the past decade, the European Union’s (EU) policy toward the Arctic has undergone a gradual transformation, in which its established normative conception of the region as a zone of peace has increasingly been undermined by security and defence interests. Although the EU long viewed the Arctic as a space of multilateral cooperation and low tensions, growing strategic competition has called this framing into question. This article examines the development of EU Arctic policies, which reflects a process of transformation toward a more pronounced geopolitical role, as well as the way in which this process is connected both to the normative understanding of the Arctic as a zone of peace and to the understanding of the Union itself as a peace-oriented organization. The analysis of the main EU strategic documents and political discourse concerning the Arctic is conducted through the theoretical framework of critical peace and security studies, which conceptualize peace as a political and normative category linked to relations of power, security, and stability. Intensified transatlantic security cooperation in the Arctic is presented as an example of a broader shift in EU policy, whereby the Union retains the peace framework in its formal approach to the Arctic while simultaneously adapting it to the logic of deterrence and stability.