Building on the three previous chapters’ findings on collective ‘European’ identity, norms and moral concerns, this chapter turns to collective EU interest formulations. There are numerous collective interests such as terrorism, hybrid threats, economic volatility, climate change and energy security that have been identified by the EU Global Strategy (EU HR/VP 2016). These interests not only bind EU member states into acting together, but also signify to other, non-EU states what the EU is focusing on. The practitioners who participated in the study also identified migration, the environment, organised crime and transport as collective EU interests. Unsurprisingly they identified energy security as the most pressing common security interest that unites EU member states.
Three main patterns emerge from the corpus. First, practitioners’ constructions of energy interests are examined. The second pattern reveals practitioners’ accounts of future plans to manage the collective EU concern over energy supplies. In the third and final pattern, practitioners offer justifications of EU interests in the eastern region, beyond the collective interests in energy supplies, and again through invoking moral concerns and the vocation attributes the EU has for the eastern neighbours.
Securitizing Moves To Nowhere? The Framing of the European Union’s Energy Policy
