Charting Course to the High North: The EU’s Climate Policy in a Geopolitical Context
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2022-08-15
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en
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This thesis analyses how defensive structural realism and social constructivism explain EU’s 2021 foreign policy strategy towards the Arctic region. Through a pathway case study and process-tracing analysis, this thesis aims to explain the shift in the EU’s assertiveness towards the Arctic as a resource-rich territory. The EU has combined its economic and climate policies within its European Green Deal, defining access to renewable energy sources as imperative for its stability and security. Natural resources and economic opportunities in the Arctic are becoming increasingly accessible, while the EU’s dependence from the Russian Federation is threatening its national security. The Green Deal argues that the EU should remain an economically competitive power in the world, which can be achieved on the condition that EU industries and populations have access to affordable and secure energy supplies. The EU’s strategy is a first step to securing access to necessary resources for transition to renewable and secure energy, becoming independent from its current imports from the Russian Federation. Moreover, social constructivism shows that the EU inserts itself into Arctic affairs through their access point, namely climate and environmental policy. The EU takes advantage of its previously established role as a global leader, thereby making itself into a legitimate actor with interests to be defended in the Arctic. The theories of norm dynamics and cultures of anarchy explain how identities and interests, constructed through international interactions and perceptions of others, motivate the EU to limits its previous reliance on resource-exporting states.
Keywords: European Union; Russia, Arctic Affairs, International Relations, Natural resources, Energy
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen