Enabling the Securitisation of the Sea Through Hybridity: EU Narrative Under Scrutiny

Abstract

The construction of EU security actorness has been accompanied by a narrative on broad concept of security and “comprehensive approach” to deal with threats. This trend has been intensified in recent years as demonstrated by the discourse on the Daesh activity, ‘hybrid threats’ and border security. This paper focuses on the constructed linkage between ‘hybrid threats’ and maritime security by the European Union. Resorting to the securitisation theoretical framework combined with a conceptual matrix on security actorness, it is argued that EU narrative reflects a securitising move intensified by the mutual reinforcing broadness and vagueness of the terms ‘maritime security’ and ‘hybrid threats’. This securitising move is explained by a co-constitutive rationale: ‘more security’—appropriation of policies and instruments of a multifunctional actor for security purposes (security of the EU, its Member States and their citizens); ‘more actorness’—securitisation of issues in order to promote the actor and its policies. This securitising move is favoured by the convergence of opportunity (broadening and deepening of security intensified by the post-2014 events), capacity (legal, institutional, policy and operational capacity in the field of security), and (ambition to have a global) presence.