Arctic Security in the EU Perspective

Building Up the “Hard” Power#

The revival of Russia’s military potential in the Arctic, the strengthening of its control over the Northern Sea Route, China’s status as a “near-Arctic state” and the development of Russian-Chinese cooperation in the Arctic have stimulated a strategic shift towards “hard” security. To a large extent, this shift is triggered by the need to have free access to critically important Arctic resources, including rare earth metals. Given China’s monopoly position in the market of raw materials, technologies and production of rare earth metals, access to Greenland’s resources is becoming vital for the EU.

A turning point in the EU security policy was its reaction to Russia’s Special Military Operation in Ukraine started on February 24, 2022. The report A Strategic Compass for Security and Defence 2022¹ presents a new vision of defense policy:

• To establish rapid deployment forces (up to 5,000) by 2025;
• To develop unified agencies for intelligence, hybrid warfare, cybersecurity, and naval presence;
• To create own military technologies;
• To strengthen defense partnerships with countries and organizations outside the EU.

The document stresses the growing conflict in international relations as a global trend. The sources of EU threats are also seen as potentially coming from everywhere, so the EU’s security policy should be developed as a complement to NATO’s policy. The joining of Sweden and Finland to the alliance made the Arctic part of NATO’s eastern flank. From the other side, Russia and China began to be seen as sources of threats in the Baltic, Northern, Norwegian and Barents Seas.

But cooperation with NATO must be accompanied by the development of EU own military potential, because about half of the weapons and equipment are produced inside the EU. The growing autonomy of the EU’s security policy was facilitated by the scandal surrounding Greenland, provoked by Trump’s statements about annexation of the island. Denmark was faced with a difficult choice: how not to lose the security guarantees of NATO, where the US still plays a leading role, but also not to lose its territorial integrity. Experts at the Danish Institute of International Relations see real perspective in partially distancing from the US and relying more on the EU as a political guarantor of security.

In line with these sentiments, in October 2025 the European Commission adopted the 2030 Roadmap for Strengthening Defense Readiness². It aims to accumulate military capabilities for conducting independent military operations, without losing interoperability with NATO. The roadmap implies creation of “full-spectrum forces”: land, naval, air, space forces as well as its own anti-missile defense. The document indicates that potential military operations are possible in Africa, the Middle East, the Asia-Pacific region, and the Arctic. To meet these challenges, military spending is rapidly increasing: €218 billion in 2021, €343 billion in 2024, €392 billion in 2025. The military expenditures of the EU member states are planned to increase up to 3.5%.

The EU’s military buildup will focus on the following approaches:

• Production of attack drones in cooperation with the Ukrainian military-industrial complex;
• Creation of defensive capabilities against potential Russian attacks from Belarus and in the Baltic Sea;
• Development of layered missile defense systems integrated into the NATO system;
• Providing the protection of civil and military space satellites.

Western experts pay special attention to the protection of critical underwater and coastal infrastructure. This infrastructure includes fiber-optic and power cables, gas pipelines, port terminals, and renewable energy facilities. Relevant military programs are being developed both by the EU and NATO military structures. In particular, unmanned systems will be actively implemented in the Arctic for underwater, surface and aerial operations. This activity poses challenges for Russia, especially for the laying of the Polar Express fiber-optic cable along the seabed from Murmansk to Vladivostok.

Can the EU Implement Ambitious Plans?#

According to a number of experts, the EU’s plans face a number of objective difficulties: rising energy prices, the inevitable duplication of functions with NATO, and the growing influence of the European Commission, which, amid the EU crisis, tends to make decisions without coordination with other member states of the union. Another problem for the EU is that the Arctic is important mainly for its Northern European member states, rather than for the rest of Europe, which has other priorities.

As for the Northern Europe, Sweden stresses that it will pursue its policy in the region independently of the EU, which should not use military tools in the Arctic. If it follows the EU, Norway has to finance European structures such as the Joint Staff or the European Defense Agency, as well as to share sensitive information on military technologies. Norway, however, does not show much enthusiasm in this regard. In security policy Norway believes that the EU should limit itself to “soft” power and delegate military issues to NATO.

The European expert community has different attitudes towards cooperation with Russia in the Arctic, and some experts do not share radical anti-Russian sentiments. For example, back in 2016, a group of Northern European experts from the Arctic Center of the University of Lapland (Rovaniemi, Finland) initiated a project called “Arctic Europe”. These experts believed that since EU member states such as Denmark, Finland and Sweden had a tradition of long-term cooperation on various aspects of Arctic policy, so they could serve a kind of EU “window” into the Arctic. After the start of the Special Military Operation in Ukraine (2022), many experts representing this view had to succumb to harsh political pressure from the EU and were forced to abandon calls for cooperation with Russia. Nevertheless, balanced researchers are still represented in the Western scientific community.

Another hampering factor is the fact that the Northern European states have been cooperating since 2009 within the framework of the NORDEFCO, including Sweden, Finland, Norway, Iceland and Denmark. These “Nordic Five” consider it inappropriate to duplicate the NORDEFCO defense functions with the EU. NORDEFCO has moved³ from coordinating defense policy to the creation of joint headquarters, unified logistics system to rapid deployment, and readiness for joint operations with NATO. Given the capabilities of NATO, military cooperation with the EU is unlikely to be a priority for Norway. Finland is also a member of the EU, but in military policy it is more focused on cooperation with NATO, NORDEFCO and the US on a bilateral basis. Finally, during 2021–23 bilateral long-term agreements between the US from one side, and Denmark, Finland, Sweden and Norway, from the other side were signed. These agreements are focused on the long-term military presence of the US in these states and this way prevent these states from approaching the EU in defense policy.

Conclusions#

The EU’s attention to the Arctic is of a long-term nature and is aimed at achieving “strategic autonomy” from the United States, countering the hypothetical “military expansion” of Russia and China in the Arctic and providing access to natural resources.

The EU’s Arctic security policy will focus on resolving disagreements with the US on Arctic policy, military-technical cooperation within the EU, and joint development of weapons.

The EU will complement NATO in the Arctic security, but the deterrence of the “potential enemy”, defense, exercises, training and conducting operations will remain under the NATO “umbrella”.

If the EU manages to increase military spending to 3.5%, it will create a powerful military potential in the medium term, obviously directed against Russia. In this case, the EU will become a more significant “player” in Arctic security policy compared to what it is now.