The European Union, Security Governance and Collective Securitization

There has been a wide debate on the distinctiveness of the EU as an international actor; in this context a gap between self-representation and performance have been noticed. However, the most striking departure of the EU’s self-representation —and largely overlooked—is the emergence of the EU as an agent of collective securitization. The fundamental claim of securitization theory is that threat management results from a politics of threat pursued by a securitizing agent. The theory explicitly links together the social construction of the threat with socially-acceptable governance or policy measures. Given this link between “threat design” and “threat management”, it is surprising that the analysis of security governance in Europe has not engaged with securitization theory to explain how security comes to be defined in the social integration among different actors. This Special Issue presents a theory of Collective securitization in the EU, tests it in five different policy areas (cyberspace, migration, health, energy, terrorism) and against normative theory, and draws conclusions on both the general theory of securitization and the specific case of the EU as a securitizing actor.