‘Talking the Talk or Walking the Walk’: Understanding the EU's Security Identity

How do European Union security practices constitute the EU as an ‘actor’ in global politics? Debates about the EU's actorness are as old as the concept of European integration itself. Christopher J. Bickerton has argued that rather than debating the EU's role in global politics from the perspective of ‘actorness’, research should focus on the functions of EU policy practices and the role they play in defining and creating that ‘actorness’. His approach leaves unquestioned the relationship between identity, interests and these practices. This article reorients these discussions towards the literature on security, identity and foreign policy. It argues that security practices are performative, that they play an active role in constructing the ‘selves’ they claim to protect and the ‘others’ deemed threatening or as targets for intervention. It proceeds by examining twenty-first-century European security practices in order to understand what, if any, security identity the EU is constructing.