Abstract

In October 2021, the European Union (EU) published its fourth Arctic policy, aiming for greater involvement in the Arctic due to climatic and geostrategic concerns. The EU’s position – both inside and outside the Arctic region – raises crucial questions about how we understand regions and their institutions as geopolitical actors. It was therefore necessary to complicate the main Eurocentric narrative of a political entity (the EU) engaging in a geographical area (the Arctic). I propose a novel geopolitical approach, viewing EU-Arctic relations as interactions between two equivalent but distinct supra-national regions: the Arctic and its governance (“ArctiC”) and Europe and the EU (“EUrope”).

This talk specifically explores the role of Arctic conferences in ArctiC-EUrope relations. It is based on data collected during participant observation in 15 Arctic conferences between 2021 and 2024. I show how Arctic conferences contribute to the creation of a European Arctic sub-region as the major place in Arctic governance and to the blurring of regional limits. Integrating scales and temporalities, conferences are sites where we can study the meeting of EUrope and the ArctiC geographically, epistemologically and politically.