La política ártica de la Unión Europea en perspectiva geopolíticade la cooperación pacífica a las rupturas árticas (2017-2022)

Zusammenfassung

The article aims to be a critical review of the EU’s Arctic policies from a geopolitical and historical perspective, in particular the most recent Communication of the European Union for the Arctic, from October 13 2021. It examines the legal and political factors that have served to back up the idea of the Arctic as a space of peaceful cooperation. The historical evolution of EU policies towards the Arctic region, while not exempt from points of disagreement, has taken place in a favourable geopolitical environment. This review points out the year 2017 as a critical moment in which important «Arctic ruptures» took place and have persisted up to the present moment. This is proof of a paradigm shift in the Arctic region, from peaceful cooperation to a region of possible confrontation. Against this background, the article analyses the elements of the new EU Communication towards the Arctic that can still be useful and effective and what the EU should rethink if it wants to assume leadership in the region at a time when everything points to a crisis of the liberal world order as established after World War II and re-founded in the 1990s.