Norway hands over Arctic Council intact after ‘difficult’ term as chair

‘The international backdrop has made it impossible to have full business as usual,’ Norway's foreign minister Espen Barth Eide said. Photograph: Thomas Traasdahl/Ritzau Scanpix/AFP/Getty Images

Norway is to hand over the leadership of an intergovernmental body comprising countries with territory in the Arctic after what its foreign minister called a “difficult two years”, during which there have been unprecedented tensions within the group’s membership related to Russia’s war in Ukraine and Donald Trump’s threat to seize Greenland.

The Arctic Council requires consensus from all eight Arctic states – the US, Russia, Canada, Finland, Iceland, Norway, the kingdom of Denmark, which includes Greenland, and Sweden – for all decisions and statements.