Description
It is widely accepted that energy became increasingly ‘securitised’ in the EU, and a growing body of literature dedicated to examining the impact this has on the kind of energy policies the EU can pursue and its claims to ‘actorness’ (e.g. Natorksi and Herranz-Surralles, 2008; Hofmann and Stager, 2019). However, much of this research is premised on the myth that the 2000s were a key turning point during which securitisation occurred due, largely, to gas supply disruptions in 2006 and 2009. This paper aims to historicise the securitisation of energy in the EU through a discourse analysis of the multitude of ways in which energy and security have been coupled throughout the history of European integration. In doing so it makes three main claims. First, energy did not become securitised in the 2000s but has instead always been regarded as a security concern. What has changed at different points in time are the form that those security concerns have taken, both in terms of their referent objects and their logics. Second, a concern for energy security does not necessarily lead to more or less European integration, but it does shape the particular practices and modalities through which energy use is governed in national and transnational contexts. Third, this legacy of securitisation matters because when energy security concerns have emerged and dissolved at various points in the history of integration, they have served to fix particular ways in which energy security can be understood. This in turn acts as a key discursive resource for subsequent claims about threats to energy security. This paper concludes by highlighting the importance of studying processes of securitisation over longer time periods to capture these dynamics and for problematising the distinction that is often drawn between normal and security politics.
