The European Union’s Crisis Management Narrative: from the Common Security and Defence Policy to strategic crisis management?

The EU was not designed to manage risks, crises, and disasters. At the same time, in the last two decades, we have witnessed a constant outpouring of EU policies, interventions, and operations for the management of different types of crises, from conflicts in Africa to the COVID-19 pandemic, from natural disasters in and outside Europe to the war in Ukraine, from the 2009 eurozone crisis to the 2015 massive migrants’ influx. This EU’s engagement has resulted in a constant expansion of the EU crisis management capacity in several areas - military, civilian, humanitarian, economic, health - with consequent modifications of the EU’s institutions and policy making. Scholars study this varied landscape to pinpoint institutional changes and challenges about the impact of crises on the EU integration, solidarity, and cohesion. This paper follows a similar vein of inquiry on the EU crisis management capacity widening and deepening by tracing the so-called crisis management discourse within two EU institutions: the European Commission and the European External Action Service. What do these two institutions mean for crisis management? How has this meaning legitimised policies and changes? This crisis management discourse, retrieved through a discursive institutionalist analysis of EC and EEAS official documents from the last 10 years, is contrasted with the conceptualisation of crisis management stemming from the crisis-related literature. The paper makes two arguments: first, the two institutions lack a clear explanation of the term. Agreeing on one single definition around crisis management could help identifying key actors, clarifying roles, and improving the crisis management effectiveness within and between the two institutions. Second, the way this terminology is applied at EU policy level has given rise to a scholarly production separated from the crisis-related literature, making the inter-disciplinary discussion quite challenging. This should be explored to find a comprehensive scientific definition.