EU launches dedicated Arctic strategy as geopolitical contest over region intensifies

The European Union is presenting a new Arctic strategy today, framing the region as one of the most consequential spaces for European security, trade and energy supply.

EU Council President António Costa and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz have both underlined the shift in thinking. Merz, speaking at an Arctic summit in Lapland weeks ago, called the High North the "now most critical" area for Europe. Costa is expected to elaborate on the rationale alongside the strategy's publication.

The document is driven by three converging pressures. Melting ice around the North Pole is opening shipping lanes that could become commercially viable within the coming decade, creating new trade routes that bypass current chokepoints. The same thaw is making Arctic raw materials more accessible — oil, gas, iron, copper and nickel among them.

Most strategically, large deposits of rare earth elements lie beneath Greenland's surface. Those minerals are judged essential for future technologies and Europe's energy transition, making Greenland a focal point of the broader geopolitical contest the strategy is designed to address.

The Arctic has become, in Brussels's own framing, an arena of great-power competition — a recognition that what happens at the top of the world now shapes outcomes at the bottom of European supply chains.