Emotional politics of norm hierarchy in EU’s external relations: The case of climate crisis and the EU’s Arctic Strategy

This paper focuses on the influence of emotions in determining the hierarchy of norms in the EU’s Arctic Strategy in times of climate crisis. This strategy comprises three focal policy areas (climate change mitigation in line with the European Green Deal and the Paris Agreement, environmental protection according to EU environmental law and promotion of indigenous peoples’ (human) rights as developed within the UN) that have contradictory implications. When a clash of norms appears in a context in which there is no clear legal hierarchy between them, then it is the political context that determines which of these norms prevails due to the urgency or primacy emanating from the context. This paper looks into how emotions contribute to determining this primacy among the contradictory norms of the EU’s Arctic strategy. The paper first operationalises the conceptual framework on the enabling and constraining mechanisms through which emotions play a role in the making of EU foreign policy for the case of the EU’s Arctic Strategy. Secondly, the paper focuses on each of the policy areas mentioned above, carrying out both an emotion discourse analysis and a critical discourse analysis of EU documents (Communications from the Commission, Council conclusions and EP resolutions) to demonstrate the relationship between emotions, urgency and power relationships among political actors involved in each of these policy areas. Lastly, the paper brings the analyses of these policy areas together and demonstrates which emotional discourses gain primacy over others and through which enabling and constraining mechanisms. It finds out that climate change mitigation and reaching the targets of the European Green Deal have gained primacy over all other policies. The war in Ukraine has exacerbated need for autonomy over the supply of critical raw materials, adding to environmental degradation prospects and neglect of human rights issues.