When a power cable was sabotaged under the Baltic Sea last year, nobody in Brussels had to hold an emergency summit. Within days, a group of 10 countries – including Britain, Norway and several EU states, but not the EU itself – had a system running that tracked the ships responsible.
The European Union was not involved. It could not be. It is not a member of the group that did it.
That gap says more about the EU’s real problem in the Arctic than last month’s Iceland referendum result does.
Icelanders voted narrowly against reopening talks to join the EU, on 29 August.
Some of the coverage since has treated this as a setback for Brussels’ Arctic ambitions. It is not – and understanding why says something important about what the EU can and cannot do in the region, whatever Icelanders had decided.
