by Andreas Raspotnik and Adam Stępień
According to the Communication’s very first paragraph, a “safe, stable, sustainable and prosperous Arctic is important (…) for the European Union”, with the Union having a “strategic interest in playing a key role in the Arctic region”. Why is it so important for the EU that the Arctic region remains a “zone of peace, prosperity and constructive international cooperation”?
The functionality of the European Union is determined by its various neighbourhoods and frontier areas. Instability, chaos and/or unpredictability in these regions significantly influence the Union’s internal stability, posing challenges to the very existence of the Union as such. At the moment, the migration and refugee crisis along Europe’s southern borders serves as a constant reminder of how external threats are having a lasting and distressing impact on the EU’s internal stability. In a nutshell, in today’s post-Cold War environment, internal and external elements of security and stability are inextricably linked. Hence, it is in Europe’s very own interests to create neighbourhoods of stability and predictability.
