The EU’s ontological (in)security: stabilising the ENP area … and the EU-self?

The 2016 EU Global Strategy and the 2015 European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) review have made stabilisation of the ENP area one of their main priorities. Our argument here, however, is that the Global Strategy and the ENP review not only seek to mitigate the numerous crises currently affecting the neighbourhood; they also aim to address a set of intra-EU vulnerabilities linked to events in the ENP area that are threatening the EU’s own ontological security. We employ narrative analysis to explore how insecurity in the EU and in the ENP area is affecting the EU’s relation to the neighbourhood-other and its understanding of the EU-self. Our main findings point to the Global Strategy and the ENP review providing ample measures to stabilise the neighbourhood. However, whether they have provided a sufficiently compelling narrative to enable the emergence of new emotional structures for the EU and its member states to make sense of themselves and their relation to the neighbourhood-other remains an open question

The European Union and lethal autonomous weapons systems: united in diversity?

This chapter focuses on norm contestation in the emerging stage by exploring the possible prohibition of lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS), which is advocated by the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots. At the UN Convention on Conventional Weapons, there is a shared agreement regarding a new organizing principle on human control. But different normative views on how human control should be regulated are leading the debate to a deadlock situation. On the one hand, the group advocating for inaction and on the other hand, the group of countries willing to ban LAWS. To avoid this, Germany and France together with the EU delegation worked on a soft law instrument. At the intra-EU level, an interinstitutional agreement between the European Commission, the European Parliament, and the Council of the EU has agreed to do not fund LAWS within the European Defence Fund. All in all, in both international organizations deliberation as a mode of contestation was dominant and resulted in a soft contestation of the emerging norm. As a result, the EU at the international level-triggered norm followership, where its fundamental norms and values of EU foreign policy proved to be resilient, while at the intra-EU level it enhanced internal cohesiveness.Esther Barbé wishes to acknowledge the Observatory of European Foreign Policy-SGR, funded by the Agency for Management of University Research Grants (AGAUR) of the Catalan Government (Grant agreement: 2017-SGR-693). Diego Badell thanks the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry, and Competitiveness for funding (FPI, Grant number: BES-2017-079692)