European Parliament Committee on Foreign Affairs, Hearing on "The EU and Antarctica: a foreign policy perspective,” 14 June 2022 from 14.30 to 16.00 CET - online public hearing

In the brief time given to me, I plan to cover the basics of Antarctic governance, focus on some of the key policy issues that are implicated, and finally refer to current strains on Antarctic cooperation related to the Ukraine crisis. [...] We speak of the Antarctic Treaty System to refer in effect to three treaty instruments that are at the core of international rules related to Antarctica, as well as their implementation: The Antarctic Treaty of 1959, the Environmental Protocol to that Treaty, and the Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources. [...] The parties to the Antarctic Treaty, reacting to concerns about management of krill resources, established the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR), via the CAMLR Convention in 1980. [...] The Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty was signed in 1991 and entered into force in 1998 and to a significant degree makes up for the fact that the Antarctic Treaty from three decades earlier did not focus on the environment. [...] Thus Europe, and the EU in particular, play a crucial role in Antarctic matters, in terms of its politics, the science that is done there, and the human impacts on the region.