The EU in the Arctic: How China’s Polar Ambitions Became a Challenge for the Green Transition
This post is based on the paper entitled “Explaining the Conflict Dynamics of EU-China Climate Relations: A Case of Collective Securitisation”, presented at the UACES 2025 Graduate Forum Research Conference on May 29 in Athens, Greece. The original paper focuses on the increasing tension between China and the EU in the climate domain and provides a detailed analysis of the EU’s securitising discourse vis-à-vis China’s climate-related policies and actions. The author is grateful to the UACES for supporting her participation in the conference.
The Arctic is an exceptional venue for undisputed international cooperation against climate-induced threats. Due to this exceptionalism, it has long been an exceptional venue for undisputed international cooperation, i.e. ‘a zone of peace’. The contestations over the Arctic’s economic and security-related potential, however, seem to transform this region into a future Middle East. While the region is under the dire pressure of climate-induced threats, the possibility of unlocking new opportunities for resource extraction and transport routes due to melting frost has fuelled the geopolitical race between major powers such as China and the EU.
Until the early 2010s, the EU and China disregarded each other in the Arctic due to the absence of a functional relationship. Due to its geographical position, the EU’s policy preferences have always been closely linked to the developments in its northern neighbourhood. Nevertheless, the Union’s regulatory influence, known as the Brussels effect, has been limited in Arctic affairs. Moreover, the EU’s concerns over the involvement of a major power in the region were primarily about Russia. The 2007 headlines picturing the Russian flag on the Arctic seabed alarmed the Union against possible security implications of ‘the ongoing race for natural resources in the Arctic, which may lead to security threats for the EU and overall international instability’. Likewise, in those years, the Chinese interest in the region was primarily scientific. While China solidified its position as a key player in Arctic research through scientific expeditions in the late 1990s, Beijing maintained a low-key political approach, avoiding conflicts with the coastal states. By steering clear of sensitive topics like resource exploration, China was able to engage in constructive cooperation with these states.
Since the mid-2010s, however, the increasing presence of China in the Arctic has encouraged the EU to revise its Arctic policy. China’s shifting of its Arctic priorities towards the Barents, known to be the most prosperous sub-Arctic region in terms of resource endowment, has prompted the Union to add resource-related ambitions to the traditional pillars of its Arctic policy (fighting against climate change, scientific research and sustainability). In its 2012 joint communication on the Arctic region, the Commission stated that, as a priority within the scope of Raw Materials Strategy, the EU would ‘actively pursue a raw materials diplomacy with relevant Arctic states to secure access to raw materials notably through strategic partnerships and policy dialogues’.
China’s announcement of its Polar Silk Road plan in 2018 was another critical juncture. In its 2018 White Paper on Arctic strategy, China defined itself as a ‘Near-Arctic State’ as ‘one of the continental States closest to the Arctic Circle’. China also declared its objectives to include utilising Arctic resources (oil, gas, minerals, and other non-living resources) in a ‘lawful and rational manner’. Accordingly, Chinese policymakers focused on mineral resources while encouraging Chinese enterprises to explore and utilise Arctic resources. In this sense, their cooperation with Greenland for the mining operations in Kvanefjeld was a concrete example.
Beijing’s declaration of China as a ‘Near-Arctic State’ as well as its far-reaching projects and initiatives in the region, with the ambition of becoming a “polar power”, is seen as ‘cause of great concern’ by the EU. Particularly after the adoption of the European Green Deal and the subsequent strategies, such as the Clean Industrial Deal, China’s drive for Arctic resources has become a challenge for the EU’s green transition. The EU’s ambitious (internal) climate and energy policies are likely to have significant consequences with regard to its growing need for minerals essential for renewable energy technologies, batteries and the overall move towards more environmentally friendly operations. It is anticipated that there will be a substantial increase in the demand for numerous minerals extracted in the Arctic, and only Greenland possesses 25 per cent of the global reserves of rare earth minerals, which are essential to the transition of European industry.
Beijing’s drive for access to Arctic resources and strategic leverage in the region consequently has profound ramifications on the EU’s ability to deliver the European Green Deal. Particularly, the geopolitical competition over the extraction and flow of minerals becomes a matter of strategic autonomy for the EU. That is why, the Commission have occasionally raised concerns over the potential tensions that could ‘arise from competition in contested areas, such as space or the Arctic’. The concerns over China’s growing interest in the Arctic’s vast reserve of rare-earth minerals, ‘which would help the EU to reduce its dependency on China’, are shared by the other EU institutions. Indeed, strategic foresight studies reveal that the EU is overdependent on China for the supply for critical raw materials required particularly for the production and storage of solar and wind energy. Chinese firms’ dominance in the extraction and refining of these materials leaves minimal margin for supply diversification, making it more imperative for the EU to access Arctic resources.
All in all, the long-held perception of the Arctic as a peace zone is no longer valid. Rather, it has become an area for increasing rivalry, in which the EU’s economic security and strategic autonomy are at stake. In the context of the green (industrial) transition, the EU’s engagement in the Arctic matters has not only become ‘a geopolitical necessity’ to fulfil its ambitions, but also a matter of security. The tone of the EU’s current Arctic strategy reflects the EU’s security-related concerns over the ‘upturn in the activities of other actors, including China and growing interest in areas like ownership of critical infrastructure’. In this vein, the EU needs to revise its current Arctic policy based on pragmatic and strategic assessments. After all, navigating in a geopolitical race with a major power like China requires a more assertive and security-conscious approach to protect the Union’s vital interests in the High North.
