Observer States’ Commitments to the Arctic Council: The Arctic Policy Documents of the United Kingdom and Germany as Case Study

• Published in: The Yearbook of Polar Law Online
• Main Authors: Śmieszek, Małgorzata, Kankaanpää, Paula
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: Brill 2014
• Subjects: Arctic; Kiruna; Nuuk; Arctic Council; Yearbook of Polar Law
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1876-8814_014; https://brill.com/view/journals/yplo/6/1/article-p375_14.xml; https://data.brill.com/files/journals/22116427_006_01_s014_text.pdf

The Ministerial Meeting of the Arctic Council in Kiruna, Sweden in May 2013 received unprecedented coverage in the worldwide media. The main reason behind that attention was triggered by the expected decision of the Council to grant observer status to applicants, including China and the European Union. However, not only countries and entities seeking access to the AC proceedings have been increasingly active in their approach towards the region. Also the ‘old’ observer states to the Council got spurred by recent developments and among them the United Kingdom and Germany were the first ones to set out their overall Arctic policies in fall 2013. This article looks at both documents to examine the vision for the Arctic that both countries bring and proposes to read the texts in light of the rules for observers’ participation in the Arctic Council, which were approved in Nuuk in 2011. It continues with setting them against a broader picture of the involvement of outside actors in the Arctic cooperation.