Much has been said about the European Union's exposure to high-salience crises and growing crisis management competencies. Less is known, however, about how Member States coordinate in areas of (potential) transboundary crises that are less salient and where impact may only be felt by some Member States. How is crisis management organised and anticipated before crises occur? This article examines the expansion of regulation as a mechanism through which the EU organises multi-level crisis management ex ante. Through a qualitative analysis of three cases (electricity preparedness and invasive alien species), it explains how a regulatory regime was adopted in the 2010s to coordinate and regulate crisis management policies. It argues that this essential but overlooked mechanism has further contributed to both an expansion of regulation of core state powers, and further Europeanisation of multi-level crisis management.
