The European Commission’s renewed engagement with Arctic policy arrives at a critical juncture. The Arctic is warming nearly four times faster than the global average, triggering cascading consequences that reach far beyond its shores — disrupting global weather patterns, accelerating sea level rise, and threatening one of the world’s most irreplaceable ecosystems. The EU, as a global actor with significant Arctic interests and responsibilities, has a historic opportunity to lead by example. This submission urges the Commission to adopt an Arctic policy grounded in three non-negotiable pillars: the complete renunciation of new oil and gas drilling, the maximum possible preservation of the Arctic ecosystem, and the full recognition and protection of indigenous peoples’ rights.
1. Renouncing Oil and Gas Drilling in the Arctic
The scientific consensus is unambiguous: achieving the climate targets set out in the Paris Agreement requires leaving the vast majority of known fossil fuel reserves in the ground. Arctic oil and gas reserves must remain untouched. Extracting them would not only release enormous quantities of greenhouse gases but would, in itself, constitute a political signal that economic exploitation takes precedence over planetary survival.
2. Maximum Preservation of a Fragile Ecosystem
The Arctic ecosystem — its sea ice, permafrost, tundra, ocean, and the extraordinary biodiversity they sustain — is not merely a resource to be managed. It is a living system of immense global importance, still functioning in ways that regulate the Earth’s climate, ocean currents, and biodiversity.
3. Upholding the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
The Arctic is not an empty space. It is home to more than 400,000 indigenous people who have sustained deep and reciprocal relationships with this land and sea for millennia. Their traditional knowledge, accumulated over generations, is not merely culturally valuable; it is an irreplaceable scientific resource for understanding Arctic ecosystems and the changes now underway. Any EU Arctic policy that fails to centre indigenous voices is not only ethically deficient but practically incomplete.
We call on the European Commission to adopt an unambiguous position: no new oil and gas drilling in the Arctic, the strongest possible environmental protections for its ecosystems, and the full, substantive recognition of indigenous peoples as the sovereign custodians of their ancestral homelands. Anything less would be a failure of leadership at a moment when leadership is everything.
On behalf of the European Grandparents for Climate:
Co-chairs Dr. Godela von Kirchbach and Eva Riemer