In responding to multiple crises and risks, the EU has adopted a new security agenda combined with a legitimising narrative expressed by the slogan A Europe that protects . This raises the question in how far EU security policies foster de-politicisation, as approaches in security studies would expect, or whether we can observe politicisation processes as in other policy areas.
The presentation provides insights from an ongoing research project, funded by the German Research Foundation, that investigates how and under which conditions politicisation occurs in the area EU security. The project challenges prominent arguments about depoliticisation made by securitisation and security governance approaches. Based on a multi-stage framework for the study of politicisation, the aim is to open up the black box of politicisation processes by studying politicisation moves of various actors, the interactive contentious politics they may provoke and the resulting, oftentimes ambivalent consequences. By focusing on cases from EU counter-terrorism and border security, the project wants to explore different types and patterns of politicisation as well as facilitating conditions, be it at Brussels or national level.