Crisis or Securitization? How Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine is Changing Europe

Scholars often view Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 as yet another crisis for the EU to navigate, with the expectation that crises often force the EU to take on new competencies or extend its authority to new areas. Recent analyses, though, suggest that this crisis is different – an existential crisis – with different causes and effects. This article explores whether another literature – on securitization – could provide a more appropriate framework for understanding the effects of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on EU policy. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine caused the EU to "securitize" a wide variety of policy areas not directly related to common security and defense policy (CSDP), including international trade, financial regulation, energy policy, and accession. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine appears to have persuaded the EU to subordinate a wide variety of core areas of policy to security concerns. While securitization theory has often been applied to understanding debates on migration within the EU, this article suggests that it could be applied more generally to explain the sudden transformation of core areas of EU policy since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.