In defence of the Union: how the European Union securitized Brexit

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In defence of the Union:

how the European Union securitized

Brexit

Julien Hoez

June 2020

Master Thesis Political Science

Political Science – European Politics and External Relations

Supervisor: Dr. Rocco Bellanova Second Reader: Prof. Dr. Marieke de Goede

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1. Introduction

Shortly after the Brexit vote, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President François Hollande and Italian Head of Government Matteo Renzi stood framed by their national and European flags, dismissing claims that “the EU was finished after Brexit” (Henley, 2016) and beginning a process defending the European Union (EU) from further damage.

The EU has a history of reacting and evolving as a reaction to the crises it encounters, such as the 2010-2012 Eurozone Crisis and the so-called refugee crisis of 2015-2016. While it is not certain how Brexit and the United Kingdom‟s (UK) exit will end, it can safely be expected that it will lead to fundamental changes in the EU‟s existence, with a financially important member state and one that contributed to multiple programs in a significant manner leaving the Union.

1.1 Research question and conceptual approach

Due to the EU still being a young project that is developing on a daily basis, it is essential to develop a deep understand of it‟s behaviour, particularly in a situation it has never encountered before. It is for this reason that this thesis has focused on building an understand how EU leaders treated and represented Brexit with regard to the security of the union, and to investigate whether the EU believed Brexit to be a threat, as well as how this may have been used to form certain policies.

There were several ways in which this thesis could have explored how Brexit would affect European security, such as looking at the implications that it held for European policing and counter-terrorism operations, the effect it could have on the EU‟s data security and data protection initiatives, and even how the EU‟s normative power within the European Neighbourhood would be affected by the EU leaving.

While one option for this thesis was to investigate how Brexit could or would affect European security as a consequence, the chosen focus of this thesis provides the added benefit of adding to the library of knowledge regarding the behaviour of the EU within EU studies, but also contributing to the body of evidence of the behaviour found within European politics during various crises.

It is for this reason that this thesis seeks to answer the research question: Has the EU framed Brexit as a security issue? And if so, how?

This thesis focuses on the theories of collective securitization (Lucarelli, 2018)(Floyd, 2019)(Sperling and Webber, 2017) utilizing this due to the compatibility with both the analysis of political discourse, as well as securitization in a collective environment such as the EU. This is more appropriate than

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5 using classical securitization theory (Buzan et al., 1998)(Waever, 1995)(Waever, 2000)(Waever, 2011), for example, due to this being primarily focussed on the behaviour of individual states in relations to one another. Collective security is a theory that is becoming increasingly used within EU studies due to it‟s applicability to the multi-institutional and multi-member nature of the EU, allowing an effective way of analysing the EU‟s behaviour.

Securitization is the act of developing a discourse that treats a non-military issue as a danger or security problem to a referent actor, which must be dealt with through extraordinary means with the permission of an audience. Collective Securitization builds upon the initial theory, taking into account the behaviour of a collective group such as the EU, which renders securitization an action undertaken by an institutionalised group (Floyd, 2019, p.391).

While Brexit may not seem like a danger or a security problem at first glance, when we delve into the various understandings of security that exist, this Thesis discovers that European leaders perceived, presented and reacted to several security issues that Brexit posed to the Union.

This thesis, therefore, utilizes definitions of security, as well as theories of securitization and collective securitization in order to explore how the EU engaged in securitization to frame Brexit as a security issue between 2016 until 2020, focusing on employing discourse analysis on particular speech acts and policy outputs.

Of course, as this thesis will discuss, speech acts are a way of gaining the power to react to security issues through extraordinary measures (Buzan et al., 1998, p24), it is for this reason that this thesis looks at measures such as the unprecedented solidarity shown between the member states, and the way they put their trust in the European Commission, effectively surrendering sovereignty in a way that was unforeseen and unexpected.

This solidarity between the EU member states and it‟s institutions was extraordinary and was not expected by British politicians and negotiators who believe that they would be able to “blackmail and divide” the member states to improve their negotiating position (Boffey et al, 2017), and to be able to gain access to institutions and programs that no third country had ever achieved.

1.2 Structure of the thesis

The first section of this thesis focuses on defining the terms that are essential to the success of this thesis, utilizing the work of Baldwin (1997), Buzan (1991), Mearsheimer (2001) and Wolfers (1952) to construct a robust understanding of how security is understood. This is combined with Navaris (2008) work on how different schools of political theory understand the security systems of the state, utilizing Navaris work on Realist and Liberal security systems to build up an understanding of how

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6 the EU behaves as a security actor, which will aid in our understanding of how and what the EU securitized during the Brexit saga.

The second section of this thesis delves into the theory of securitization, building the base of our theoretical framework by drawing heavily from the work of Buzan et al. (1998) and Waever (1995), defining what it is and outlining the process of securitization, before moving on to what forms the core of this thesis‟ analysis: Collective Securitization. Utilizing the work of Lucarelli (2018), this section outlines how Securitization can be achieved collectively, and what the process of collective securitization is. This is followed by the final theoretical framework of the thesis, as well as an outlining of the methodology employed.

Collective Securitization forms the core of this thesis due to the way it allows us to analyse the securitization of a collective group, as well as through the way it provides a framework for this analysis with its outline of the steps of collective securitization, which informs the structure of the empirical chapter.

The third section of this thesis concentrates on answering the primary question of this thesis: Has the EU framed Brexit as a security issue? And if so, how? The thesis answers this by exploring how EU leaders framed Brexit as a security threat to the EU‟s unity, to its economic interests, and consequently, its citizens, through the use of speech acts. This is done through analysing speeches given by political leaders across the EU institutions and the Member States, both through official publications by governments and institutions, and through direct quotations found within newspapers and other journalistic sources.

This thesis then proceeds to show how this resulted in a number of policy outputs that were sculpted to defend the interests of the EU. This policy output includes documents such as the Withdrawal Agreement, the political declaration on the future UK-EU relationship, as well as the Northern Ireland protocol, all of which are analysed.

1.3 Literature review

In this section I will explore the existing literature relating to Brexit, and in the following theoretical chapter, I will discuss the debates on security, approaches to both securitization and collective securitization.

While this thesis focusses on Brexit, research on the topic is in it‟s nascent stages due it being a recent event. The full implications of this democratic choice has yet to be understood, and it remains an area of research that has no been fully explored.

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7 When investigating the literature related to Brexit, we find that much of the literature regarding Brexit focuses on topics such as the legal and policy challenges that Brexit for the UK (Dougan, 2017), legal aspects such as how Brexit will affect Aviation law (Waluk, 2019), how it will affect financial services (Kern et al. 2018), How speech acts led to the UK voting for Brexit (Buckledee, 2018), and even what role the memories of the British Empire played in the referendum vote (Ward and Rasch, 2019).

Much of the analysis of Brexit and the negotiations surrounding the UK‟s withdrawal, as well as its future relationship with the EU, has focused on the UK‟s position and actions (Masnina, 2018; Noda, 2018). Despite the importance of the EU‟s perceptions of Brexit, and the subsequent effect this will have had on its behaviour, little analysis has focused on it as an actor during the Brexit process (Oliver and Williams, 2016, p548).

Analysis of how Brexit would affect the EU is therefore still in it‟s nascent stages, but there is some analysis. For instance, Tim Oliver and Michael John Williams argue that “there is much less analysis of what Brexit might mean for wider international relations, especially for the EU” (Oliver and Williams, 2016, p548).

As Oliver and Williams (2016) discuss, Brexit weighs on EU security through the loss of the EU as a key player in European Security, as well as through the way that it will affect “European geopolitics…NATO”, and even the US-EU relationship (Oliver and Williams, 2016, p.547) due to the importance of the role that the UK played in US-EU relations (Oliver and Williams, 2016, p.565). There has also been some analysis on how the EU reacted to Brexit and it‟s related events (Pertusot, 2018), however, analysis has yet to investigate the ways which the EU may or may not have securitized Brexit, how they acted to turn the issue into a security problem that had to be dealt with through extraordinary measures, and how this will have allowed scholars to analyses the EU's reactions to the twists and turns of the process. Doing this would, as a result, also allow us to better understand the EU as an actor, and better understand its future actions.

Initial research existing literature regarding the specific topic of securitization of Brexit and EU reactions to it, this thesis discovered that there is very little existing research on the chosen topic that could help answer this thesis‟ question. However, this thesis discovered that Tim Oliver‟s edited book which include Pertussot‟s analysis (2018) has done work on analysing the EU‟s perspective of Brexit, providing possibly the only sources of analysis within both EU studies, International Relations, and political science as a whole that focuses exclusively on the EU itself.

However, Oliver‟s edited book focuses primarily on the EU‟s perspectives across a period that spans the renegotiations between David Cameron and EU leaders regarding the UK‟s membership, the

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8 referendum result itself and the reactions, and finishes upon the triggering of Article 50, rather than focusing exclusively on the reactions following the Brexit referendum over a prolonged period. It is for this reason that this thesis focuses on supplementing a nascent literature on Brexit and utilizing the theories of securitization (Buzan et al., 1998)(Waever, 1995)(Waever, 2000)(Waever, 2011) and collective securitization(Lucarelli, 2018)(Floyd, 2019)(Sperling and Webber, 2017), analysing Brexit from the point of view of the EU through a security lens. This supplements the existing literature by adding analysis of the behaviour of the EU and it‟s leading actors, particularly their use of speech acts to represent Brexit, and how this led to specific policy outputs.

This approach may prove useful to expanding the nascent literature on Brexit, expanding on knowledge of the EU‟s behaviour, and expanding the literature within EU Studies.

1.4 Limits of Research

During the course of the writing of this master‟s thesis, the global COVID-19 Coronavirus Pandemic took place, leading to initial plans for this thesis to be changed, and limiting the research that could be undertaken. Initially, the empirical chapter was planned to involve the interviewing of European officials and experts who were involved in the Brexit negotiations, and analysing these interviews to supplement the analysis in order to build primary sources to supplement the speeches and documents currently in use.

Due to it being beyond the scope and size of this thesis, this thesis has not worked towards proving that the securitizing acts within the empirical chapter managed to convince the various definitions of audiences put forward within the theoretical chapter below. However, as discussed in the conclusion, this is an area of analysis that future academic and professional work I undertake could focus on.

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2. Theoretical chapter

2.0 Introduction

The goal of this chapter is to provide key information on the theoretical concepts required for this thesis to be able to achieve its goal. Firstly, it will explore the way security is perceived and defined, before moving on to the key concept for this thesis‟s analysis: Securitization. To begin with, this chapter will define security, before moving on to outline classical Securitization theory, looking at Waever (1995) and Buzan et al. (1998). Following this, the chapter will concentrate on the theory of Collective Securitization, taking key insights from Lucarelli (2018), Sperling and Webber (2017) and Neal (2019).

2.1 Defining Security

In order to better understand and explore the behaviour of the EU during the Brexit process and its possible use of securitization, we must first explore how security is understood in the relevant literature and how it is defined as if it is not specified, the concept of security can be “dangerously ambiguous” (Baldwin, 1997, p12).

Traditionally, during the Cold War, an issue was considered a security issue if military force was relevant, and if it this was not the case, the issue was categorized as being low politics (Baldwin, 1997, p9). This has contributed to security being viewed as a contested concept (Baldwin, 1997, p10) and is why we must explore how security is defined.

To begin with, Buzan defined security as the “pursuit of freedom from threats” (Buzan, 1991, p18), which is itself an obscure way of viewing security, raising more questions than answers. What do we understand as a threat? Can we truly be free of threats? And what actions would we need to take to achieve this freedom from threats?

International Relations theory is one way of answering the above questions, and we can answer these by looking at how security is understood by the two most dominant theories in International Relations: realism and liberalism. While they do hold a diverse range of views internally, their broad frameworks provide strong explanations for views on security.

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10 Realist and liberal security systems

Theoretical base Realist (alliance) Liberal (community of

law) Structure of the international system Material; static; anarchic; self-help system Social; dynamic; governance without government Conceptions of security

Basic Principles Accumulation of power Integration

Strategies Military deterrence; control of allies

Democratization; conflict resolution; rule of Law Institutional features Functional Scope Military realm only Multiple issue areas

Criterion for membership

Strategic relevance Democratic system of rule

Internal power structure

Reflects distribution of power; most likely hegemonic

Symmetrical; high degree of

interdependence Decision making Will of dominant power

prevails Democratically legitimized Relation of system to its environment Dissociated; perception of threat Serves as an attractive model; open for association

Source: Navari, 2008, p.42

Looking at the above table, we see that the Realists view security as necessitating the accumulation of power, and rely on military deterrence to achieve security. It also focuses exclusively on the military realm in its institutional set-ups, which is a more traditional view of security.

On the other hand, the Liberal security system views the main way of achieving security as integration, utilizing democratization, conflict resolution and rule of law to achieve this, and covers multiple issue areas, not just the military realm.

This appears to be a perfect outline for EU views of security, which focuses on rule of law to ensure internal security, as well as democratization and normativity within both its immediate neighbourhood

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11 and in the wider global community. It is also important to note this as it helps this thesis to frame European behaviour in a security context, and gives us an understanding of how the EU defends its security.

The realist school of international relations, with its focus on “power, fear and anarchy” (Elman, 2008), understandably understands security primarily through a military lens, particularly its utility in ensuring state survival in an anarchic world.

Realist scholar Stephen Walt highlights how security studies can be defined as “the study of the threat, use, and control of military force” (Walt, 1991, p212). Baldwin subsequently argues that Neorealists define security through their belief that states compete for security, with states that have “more security than other states” being better at surviving the game that is international politics” (Baldwin, 1997, p.10-11).

There is a disagreement within neorealism regarding the motivations of states seeking security, with the point of contention being between „defensive realists‟ such as Kenneth Waltz, who believe that states are merely attempting to survive (Mearsheimer, 2001), whereas „offensive realists‟ such as John Mearsheimer believe that states aim to maximise their relative power (Mearsheimer, 2001).

Liberalism, on the other hand, views threats as coming from a variety of different issue and policy areas, such as the economic, environmental and societal sectors (Navari, 2008, p.41), and argues that the best way to combat this is a focus on mutual interests that can be achieved in cooperation with one another (Navari, 2008, p.41). It views the state not as an actor, but as an institution that is constantly being captured and constructed by a coalition of social actors (Navari, 2008, p.43).

Liberal solutions to security dilemmas focus on the use of four instruments: “International law, international organizations, political integration and democratization” (Pirnuta and Secarea, 2010, p105).

When disputes between states arise, international law is invoked to attempt to resolve the dispute, international organisations are used as mediators, and where possible, the political integration of states is utilised with a goal enforce a form of rapprochement to overcome or prevent security dilemmas from arising; democratization can also be used to help normatively influence another state and make it more similar to one's political system, which in the liberal view, prevents possible future conflicts (Pirnuta and Secarea, 2010, p.105-107).

Arnold Wolfers argued that security is, in reality, a normative term and that it is used by nation-states "in order to be either expedient – a rational means toward an accepted end – or moral, the best or least evil course of action" (Wolfers, 1952, p.484).

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12 He argues that the term security indicates the protection of values (Wolfers, 1952, p.484), and he highlights the definition proposed by Walter Lippman, who argues that a nation can only be secure as long as it is in no danger “of having to sacrifice core values” and if it is able to maintain its values if a war were to take place by achieving victory in said war (Wolfers, 1952, p.484).

2.2 Securitization

Now that this thesis has established an understanding of the different ways in which security can be understood, as well as the notion of protection itself, this thesis will now explore the literature related to classical securitization theory. This theory explains how actors engage in framing security, particularly in order to acquire additional competencies to deal with these threats by convincing a public that they should endow them with additional powers.

When we discuss securitization, we are discussing the act of transforming an entity or an event into a security threat that will directly impact a group. This takes the form of defining "who securitizes (securitizing actor), on what issues (threats), for whom (referent object), why, with what results, and not least, under what conditions" (Buzan et al., 1998, p.32).

Securitization is, first and foremost, achieved through the use of a securitizing move, which takes the form of a speech act attempting to convince an audience that an entity or event poses a direct threat to its safety, and therefore and merits actions that go beyond what is normally accepted by a government or state, in order to protect the state and its citizens.

A successful example of this would be, for example, the securitization of migration. Following the end of the Cold War, the concept of security changed from being focussed on military threats, to one that incorporates new threats such as terrorism and international crime, which “coalesce in the image of the migrant” (Atak and Crepeau, 2013, p227).

Migration was securitized primarily by actors such as political parties, or by groups such as media and religious organisations, with Migration being defined as a threat against the economic interests of states (Russo, 2008), as well as to the identities and national security of states (Russo, 2008, p.882). This is important as it demonstrates how something that wasn‟t considered a security threat or perceived as a security threat, can be changed due to the way a society can be convinced to perceive it as such. This is how people who may not necessarily have had any interest in a topic, due to it being perceived as something that would impact them, can be made to take an interest in a topic and feel threatened by it.

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13 For Waever, “security is the speech act where a securitizing actor designates a threat to a specified referent object and declares an existential threat implying a right to use extraordinary means to fence it off. The issue is securitized – becomes a security issue, a part of what is „security‟ – if the relevant audience accepts this claim and thus grants to the actor a right to violate rules that otherwise would bind their actions (Waever, 2000, p. 251).

Waever argues that it is only the actors who hold power within a sector, often the state or its elites, who can use the instrument of securitization on an issue in order to gain control over it. In his view, it is elites who declare something to be a security problem, nobody else (Waever, 1995, p51).

Securitisation theorists determined five key sectors that are securitized. These are: the Economic, Societal, Military, Political and Environmental sector (Buzan et al., 1998). Each sector has a specific referent object, which is either an object or idea that is threatened and requires protection.

For example, when securitization takes place within the societal sector, identity is the referent object that is portrayed as being threatened, and in the environmental sector it is the sustainability of ecosystems and endangered species that are portrayed as threatened.

Within the military sector is the state that is portrayed as the threatened referent object (Buzan et al., 1998, p76), which is where the more traditional, realist conception of security emerges from. In the political sector, the threatened referent object is typically related to principles such as sovereignty or the ideology of the state (Buzan et al., 1998, p22).

The Economic sector is more complex due to the various individual parts involved in a state's Economy. However, it is agreed that “supranational referent objects from specific regimes to the global market itself can be existentially threatened by factors that might undermine the rules, norms and institutions that constitute them” (Buzan et al., 1998, p22).

Moving on to the specific act of Securitization, Buzan et al. (1998) define “security” as the action which moves politics beyond the status quo, and reframes the chosen issue as either a “special kind of politics” or as being above traditional politics (Buzan et al., 1998, p. 23). We understand the “status quo” or “traditional politics” as the day-to-day politics that are played out within national arenas such as parliaments, senates and from presidential palaces; however, this could be extended to regional and local arenas, and as we will show.

It is therefore reasonable for a “special kind of politics” to be something that resembles a government of national unity in the UK during World War 2, for example, or to resemble a concentration of power around the head of state or government that we would see during times of war or crisis.

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14 Securitization, put simply, is a more extreme version of politicization, which is the act of giving something political characteristics, or turning it into a political issue to be dealt with by governing officials and bodies (Waever, 2011).

Using the above flowchart, we visualize the scale along which any political, public or policy issue can be placed. A policy‟s status can range from non-politicized (no state involvement and it is not a public debate or decision issue), to politicized (included in public policy, and required government action and resource allocation), to securitized (presented as an existential threat and treated as such through the use of emergency measures and actions that are outside of normal behaviour) (Buzan et al., 1998, p.23-24).

An issue can only become an international security issue if it can be argued that it is more important than other issues, that it should take priority over them, and, of course, must also be “presented as an existential threat” to be securitized (Buzan et al., 1998, p.24). As Buzan et al. put it, the argument must be that “[i]f we do not tackle this problem, everything else will be irrelevant (because we will not be here or will not be free to deal with it in our own way)” (Buzan et al., 1998, p.24).

The perceived lack of a future, or a direct threat to the future of a state/organisation due to a lack of action is therefore a key part of securitization, and is what permits any actor attempting to securitize an issue to actively claim the right to deal with a securitized issue through the utilization of extraordinary means and by breaking the pre-existing “rules of the game” (Buzan et al., 1998, p.24). However, it must be noted that Securitization is not only fulfilled by the breaking of established rules, or by the existential threats themselves, but “by cases of existential threats that legitimize the breaking

•No State involvement •Not a public political issue

Non-Politicized

•Included in public policy •Requires government

action/resources

Politicized

_{•Presented as an existential} threat to a referent object •Reactions fall outside of

normal political behaviour (Extraordinary actions)

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15 of rules” (Buzan et al., 1998, p.25). Put simply, the threat must be considered to be severe enough to legitimize the tearing up of the established political rule book.

In order to achieve securitization, a securitizing move is required. This can take the form of a discourse, also known as “a speech or piece of writing about a particular, usually serious, subject” (Cambridge Dictionary, N/A), that presents an issue as “an existential threat to a referent object” (Buzan et al, 1998, p.25). The threshold for something to be securitized is not the imposition of emergency measures, but merely the argument for securitization to be sufficiently accepted by a population for the legitimization of any emergency measures or other steps to be possible (Buzan et al, 1998, p.25).

Buzan et al. outline securitization as having three phases: “the existence of an existential threat, the emergency action, and effects on interunit relations by breaking free of rules” (Buzan et al., 1998, p.26).

They frame securitization as having a “specific rhetorical structure” which is formed through the expression of survival, and the priority of taking action to ensure said survival. In their words, this takes the form of a mentality where “if the problem is not handled now it will be too late, and we will not exist to remedy our failure” (Buzan et al., 1998, p.26).

In order to avoid the restrictive ties that this definition can create, such as making security an issue that is only military in nature, we need to clarify what the essential quality of security is. For Buzan et al, the essential quality of security is the “staging of existential issues in politics to lift them above politics” (Buzan et al., 1998, p.26), and to dramatize issues in order to present them as issues of “supreme priority” to the people and win their consent to treat an issue through extraordinary means (Buzan et al., 1998, p.26).

Buzan et al. help us to understand the act of Securitization through understanding the way it is constructed, particularly in the shared understanding of what is framed and responded to as a threat, and how this is done (Buzan et al., 1998, p.26).

The act of securitization is, in most cases, begun by an actor who engages in what is called, in language theory, a “speech act” (Buzan et al., 1998, p.26), and it is only by “saying the words” that begin the act of securitization that “something is done” as a result (Buzan et al., 1998, p.26).

It is also not only overt references to security that constitute the securitizing of a topic or the presence of “constant drama” (Buzan et al., 1998, p.27). The use of certain terms such as “defence” or “dikes” implies security and priority, which has the same effect (Buzan et al., 1998, p.27). Likewise, usage of the term security does not always constitute an act of securitization (Buzan et al., 1998, p.33).

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2.3 Collective Securitization

2.3.1 Introduction to collective securitization

This thesis is built upon a branch of securitization theory called „collective securitization‟. It will draw, in particular, from Sonia Lucarelli‟s recent work (Lucarelli, 2018).

Her theoretical proposal builds upon the work on Securitization theory by both Waever (1995) (2000) (2011) and Buzan et al. (1998), taking into account collective behaviour and the way that a collective group behaves and responds to circumstances and events. This addendum to securitization theory is particularly helpful for analysing the behaviour of actors such as the EU, due to it not being a single entity, but an entity comprised of a collective of states.

Collective securitization is defined as securitization “effected by an organised institutionalised group of smaller actors” (Floyd, 2019, p.391), with Rita Floyd highlighting the actions of multiple state actors behaving within a collective while maintaining their sovereignty (Floyd, 2019, p.391), such as the EU member states.

According to Lucarelli, the EU forms an interesting example of collective securitization, due to its nature as a collective actor with agency, but which has various levels of freedom to act depending on the issue area in question (Lucarelli, 2018, p.9).

Lucarelli argues that “the emergence of the EU as an agent of collective securitisation” (Lucarelli, 2018, p.2) is a phenomenon that has been overlooked by those studying EU Security Governance. She particularly criticises the fact that analysts have not used securitisation theory to explore the way that “security comes to be defined in the space of collective effort” (Lucarelli, 2018, p.2-3) in organisations such as the EU. This is due to the fact that securitization typically focuses on individual actors and how they interact and securitize against one another, which draws from realist understandings of international relations.

Lucarelli highlights that the foundation of securitisation theory is that any perceived threat emergence and the subsequent management of the threat is formed through the actions of a securitizing actor, “which explicitly links together the social construction of the threat with socially acceptable governance or policy measures” (Lucarelli, 2018, p.2).

He also raises a problem that the EU poses to those who analyse its actions using securitization as this thesis will. As the communications and statements of the EU aren‟t widely reported or debated outside of a “very narrow specialist audience” (Neal, 2009, p.336) with a minimal amount of public engagement, this poses a challenge for the use of securitization theory in analysing its discourse due to the need of an audience for securitization to be possible in the first place.

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17 It is also more difficult to identify who the main securitizing actors are in EU politics, due to the various institutions and member states, as well as to ascertain who the audience is, as there is no single European polity and every member state population experiences events in a different way to others (Neal, 2009, p.336-337).

However, Neal does note that the audience of a speech act does not necessarily need to be a public, but rather, can be “made up of bureaucrats, experts, and political professionals” (Neal, 2009, p.337). This is where the framing of audiences by both Lucarelli and Sperling and Webber come in.

To begin with, Lucarelli differentiates between two types of audiences: an „empowering audience‟ which “legitimises the securitizing actor‟s speech act” (Lucarelli, 2018, p.5); and an „attentive audience‟ which influences security debates but lacks “a legitimising/empowering role” (Lucarelli, 2018, p.5).

These can be seen in the different audiences Lucarelli identifies in different instances of securitization. In Health, for example, transnational professional networks or bureaucratic actors alternated between being securitizing actors and the audience (Lucarelli, 2018, p.5). In the case of terrorism, the US (attentive audience) and Member States (empowering audience) interacted with the EU, and in the case of climate change, the EU performed speech acts and developed their securitisation discourse and practices in front of internal and external audiences (Lucarelli, 2018, p.5).

With an organisation as complex and layered as the EU, Lucarelli considers member states to be the primary empowering audience, with external actors such as the US to be similar to attentive audiences, but being able to influence the process of securitization in some cases (Lucarelli, 2018, p.5). However, depending on the circumstance the member states are not the exclusive securitising audience, but often form part of a diverse group that can include various communities of experts such as the scientific community in health, as well as the private sector when it comes to topics such as cyberspace (Lucarelli, 2018, p.5).

This is supported by the work of Sperling and Webber, who argue that in security or political collectives that the audience is made of any organisations member states which makes the organisation the securitising actor, but only “if the member states grant it the legal and political authority to do so (Sperling and Webber, 2017, p.29). They apply this example to NATO; however, this can be applied to the EU as well if we consider it to be a securitizing actor.

As touched upon above, the EU is given its freedom to act based on the issue area in question, which is dictated by what is considered to be an EU competence. This freedom to act is given to it through its interactions with the member states, who act as an “empowering audience” to the EU (Lucarelli,

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18 2018, p.9), and one can therefore define the EU‟s audience to be its Member States and not the general public, even if the public does always have a role to play in the politics of Member States. Sperling and Weber also state that collective securitization can only be achieved through a shared threat perception across the states that form the collective, which is particularly important for this thesis analysis on the EU‟s securitization of Brexit as it highlights how essential a unified approach is to the act of collective securitization, giving us another measure to analyse the EU‟s behaviour during Brexit.

Another key finding that Lucarelli shares in her article is that policy outputs that emerge from a securitized discourse do not necessarily always involve emergency measures, but that they can instead take the form of “enhanced ordinary policy” (Lucarelli, 2018, p.5).

Andrew Neal helps us to better understand the ability of the EU to securitize issues, particularly the way in which the “securitizing moves in the EU institutions cannot be considered in exactly the same way” as the securitizing moves found within national and domestic politics, due to the fundamental difference in the “relationship between that discourse and the reception, discussion, legitimation and actualization of policy proposals and changes”, which are less clear than on a national level (Neal, 2009, p.336).

Not only is the question of securitizing actors and audience complicated by the EU‟s structure, but the policy outcomes are also complex, and may not resemble the policy outputs envisioned by Waever and other Securitization theorists in their frameworks (Neal, 2009, p.337).

Neal raises the question of whether any of the EU institutions “have the constitutional, institutional, political or legal capacity to „use extraordinary means‟ or „violate rules that otherwise would bind‟”, or in other words, “do any of the EU institutions have the capacity to „decide on the exception‟? (Neal, 2009, p.337).

He also asks whether the EU institutions even “have the capacity to mobilize intersubjective fears and insecurities” and whether or not they are capable of producing and shaping legitimacy for policies that would be considered contentious outside of a securitized situation (Neal, 2009, p.337).

For Andrew Neal, the case of FRONTEX and the “general question of security discourses and practices in the EU” highlight the “limitations of securitization theory” (Neal, 2009, p.351), which are affected by the way in which government practices have evolved to be increasingly complex, plural and diverse, preventing a “sovereign centred” understanding of security to be entirely useful (Neal, 2009, p.351), which is made worse by the sheer complexity of the EU‟s structure.

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19 Neal argues that speech acts and securitizing acts can be identified within the EU institutions, but that it is far more difficult to locate the relationship between these and policy outcomes at an EU level than it would be in a national level (Neal, 2009, p.352).

However, he does not discount this connection, instead merely stating that at a European level, much of the work is “quiet, technical and unspectacular”, and does not actively “declare itself to be in the name of security” (Neal, 2009, p.352).

Neal also highlights how processes and practices relating to security at the EU level is not driven by “crisis, emergency, and exception”, but rather through the forming of links between policy areas, various technologies and the security professionals who come from various specializations, creating what he calls a “security continuum” where distinct policy areas interact through the dynamic relationships between separate fields (Neal, 2009, p.352).

It is also worth mentioning Rita Floyds‟ Just Securitisation Theory, which posits that Securitisation can be just, insofar as it can be morally justified by a security actor (Floyd, 2019, p.393). While it may not be immediately applicable to this thesis, it is worth bearing in mind as a security actor cannot simply make up an excuse to securitize an issue, instead needing have a just reason to do so.

2.3.2 Building the theoretical framework

Lucarelli breaks down the process of collective securitization across six phases: the policy status quo; a precipitant event requiring a reconsideration of that status quo; the securitising move; the audience response; policy outputs; and the new status quo (Sperling and Webber, 2019) (Quoted in Lucarelli, 2018, p.3).

In the case of Brexit, we can break down the situation in the following way: the status quo was the UK remaining within the EU; the precipitant event was the 23 June 2016 referendum where the UK public voted to leave the EU that would lead to a weakening of the EU. The securitising move, achieved through speech acts, did not take place in one action, but across multiple years following the referendum.

There is also no single specific precipitating event, but a series of events and challenges which contribute to a transformation in the language that actors employ to describe this issue, informing the practice of security (Lucarelli, 2018, p.4). This is demonstrated across multiple cases, such as health, Schengen, Cyberspace and energy, with each case demonstrating “how a series of events, internal or external to the EU, triggered a securitisation process evident in both discourse and practice” (Lucarelli, 2018, p.4).

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20 In these circumstances, rather than there being a sudden event that triggers the securitization process, the series of cascading events and challenges can lead to what Lucarelli calls a “securitisation tipping point” (Lucarelli, 2018, p.10), with securitization being more of an evolutionary process than a sudden act.

This can be observed in the process that led to Brexit, which this thesis will explore, which began with UK proposals for changes to EU rules in 2013 (Cameron, 2013), which began a series of cascading events that culminated in the 2016 referendum.

These events included the 2015 General Election, where David Cameron won his mandate for renegotiating the UK‟s EU membership along the lines of the proposed changes to EU rules (Euractiv, 2015), which subsequently led to the to the 2016 Brexit referendum that he had promised would result from these negotiations.

The success of the leave vote during this referendum then led to the subsequent negotiations relating to the UK‟s withdrawal from the EU, as well as negotiations relating to the future relationship between the EU and the UK as a third-country.

In some cases, should a securitization process take the form of a long-term rising level of risk, rather than a conventional security threat, we even see the process of “riskification” take place at the same time (Lucarelli, 2018, p.11), which is a particular form of speech act that focuses primarily on the possibility of harm being inflicted on a referent object, rather than the direct cause of harm upon it (Lucarelli, 2017, p11).

It is of particular interest to this thesis that Lucarelli highlights that events do not “need to be of external origin...but can be seen as „domestic‟ (EU) challenges” (Lucarelli, 2018, p.4), due to Brexit, for all intents and purposes, being a domestic challenge due to it being directly caused by the decision of EU citizens voting to leave the Union.

It is also of particular interest to this thesis that Lucarelli also notes that a speech act doesn‟t have to “refer to an existential threat in the literal sense that the survival of the polity was at risk”, but that the act only had to “change radically the discourse of threat” (Lucarelli, 2018, p.4).

Sharing her analysis of the special issue this article is hosted in, she makes four key observations drawn from a number of cases across the special issue on collective securitization that are pertinent to this thesis.

Her first observation is that there was a clear “strengthening of collective action in line with prior norms and rules” (Lucarelli, 2018, p.6), and while there were no exceptional measures that disrupted ordinary policy making, that there were “significant transformations in the governance in each issue

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21 area”, with a particular acceptance about the fact that the security threat required “collective, rather than national policy solutions” (Lucarelli, 2018, p.6).

The second observation that she makes is that collective securitization leads to “the empowerment of one of more collective institutions” such as the European Commission or the European Council (Lucarelli, 2018, p.6), which is clearly displayed in the EU‟s response to Brexit, which empowered the European Commission as the lead negotiator and representative for the Union.

The third observation is that collective securitization frequently led to the creation of new institutions, procedures, or mechanisms, giving the example of the Schengen Borders Code, as well as the EU Border and Coast Guard (Lucarelli, 2018, p.6).

The fourth and final observation is that, in some cases, certain measures that were “compromise solutions designed to enhance resilience” were adopted as a response to a securitizing move (Lucarelli, 2018, p.6). This will be discussed in the empirical chapter of this thesis.

However, while this may seem to indicate that the EU does engage in collective securitization frequently, there are two particular obstacles to collective securitization: Firstly, “security goods” that are considered to be more of a national sector, such as energy and cyber, are more resilient to collective securitization than things considered to be “public goods” like climate change, health, and terrorism (Lucarelli, 2018, p.7).

Secondly, the EU‟s empowering audience itself, which is its member states, can cause problems for attempts to securitize collectively, due to the differences that arise between member states due to different political cultures and priorities between countries such as France, Poland and Estonia (Lucarelli, 2018, p.7). The audience can also often be divided with regard to the “identification of the referent object” and even with regard to “the nature of the issue at stake” (Lucarelli, 2018, p.7). However, this does not preclude collective securitization, as the identification of different referent objects is often the case (Lucarelli, 2018, p.7).

2.4 Theoretical Framework

Now that we have explored the theory of that will underpin this thesis, the framework of analysis for this thesis must be made explicit, including the definitions to be used and the use of Collective Securitization (Lucarelli, 2018) as the primary analytical tool.

To begin with, the key form of security to bear in mind throughout this thesis, in particular regarding the policy outputs of the EU‟s securitization of Brexit, is the Liberal definition of security, and the Liberal Security system: outlined in the below table:

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22 Liberal security system

Theoretical base Liberal (community of law)

Structure of the international system

Social; dynamic; governance without government

Conceptions of security

Basic Principles Integration

Strategies Democratization; conflict resolution; rule of Law

Institutional features Functional Scope Multiple issue areas Criterion for

membership

Democratic system of rule

Internal power structure Symmetrical; high degree of interdependence

Decision making Democratically legitimized Relation of system to

its environment

Serves as an attractive model; open for association

Source: Navari, 2008, p.42

This definition of security is the most pertinent to this thesis due to the way in which the EU behaves as an institutional actor, the lack of collective military power that the EU wields, as well as the way in which this security system matches the policy output outlined within the Policy Output subchapter in the empirical ehapter.

This thesis engages the theory of Collective Securitisation (Lucarelli, 2018), and utilizes the framework it outlines in order to analyse the EU‟s actions in relation to Brexit. Lucarelli‟s framework is, itself, built upon the work of Buzan et al. (Buzan et al, 1998) which gave way to the so-called Copenhagen School for the study of security. As outlined in the theoretical chapter, Securitization theory is the theory of how topics and events are framed and turned into issues that affect an entity, through a high level of politicization, and are therefore treated as threats that need to be dealt with through measures that are out of the norm (Buzan et al, 1998).

According to Lucarelli‟s framework, securitization occurs over six phases: the policy status quo; a precipitant event requiring a reconsideration of that status quo; the securitising move; the audience response; policy outputs; and the new status quo (Lucarelli, 2018, p.3). This has been illustrated in the below graphic:

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23 This outline of the phases of Collective Securitization is useful as it offers a framework that provides a timeline for the process of securitizatio, allowing analysis to differentiate between the initial starting point, the securitizing move in the form of a speech act, as well as the eventual output of the securitizing act. This is particularly important due to the nature of the Brexit process, with its two-tiered negotiation and the long period of time it took place over.

This framework for the process of securitization forms the core of the thesis empirical chapter, giving a specific timeline that can be followed in order to correctly analyse the securitization of Brexit by the EU. The Status Quo would be the UKs membership of the EU, the Precipitant event is the Brexit referendum, the securitising move is comprised of the speech acts compiled within the empirical chapter, and the audience response would be the acceptance of Brexit as a threat and the powers conferred to the European Commission. The Policy Output would be the policies that resulted from Brexit, such as the Withdrawal Agreement and the Northern Ireland Protocol , with the new status quo being the future relationship.

It should be noted that due to the size and scope of the thesis, an analysis of the audience response is not possible, and will instead need to be included in future work that will be built upon this thesis. The theory of Collective Securitization is an advancement of securitization theory, as developed by the so-called Copenhagen School (Buzan et al., 1998). This approach conceptualizes securitization by breaking it down into five separate sectors (Military, Environmental, Economic, Societal and Political). Breaking Securitization down into these five sectors allows analysts to separate security from what was once a purely military issue and allows us to view security through sectoral analysis that, at first glance, would not be seen as sectors producing security problems.

This is supplemented by Waever, who argues that states or its elites can use the instrument of securitization in order to gain control over it (Waever, 1995, p6), which is relevant due to the way in which it has been the European elites (heads of states, Institutional leaders or representatives) who have been the main securitizing actors.

Policy status quo Precipitant event Securitising move Audience response Policy output New status quo

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24 This framework will form the theoretical basis for this analysis of the EU‟s securitization of Brexit, and allow the thesis to investigate if the has EU framed Brexit as a security issue? And if so, how?

2.5 Conclusion

From this literature review, we have outlined the various understandings of security, with the Liberal view of security being of particular importance due to the form that the EU‟s actions take in the global arena. We also used this understanding to explore how protection is understood, and how states are seen to view protection.

We then subsequently explored the historical literature of securitization, focusing on Waever and Buzan et al., exploring on the basics: what are securitization and a securitizing act, the steps required for securitization, and how things are framed as a threat.

Finally, we explored what will form the core of this thesis: Collective Securitization and its six phases. This is essential to this thesis, as combined with the liberal views of security, gives us a robust background to analyse how the EU behaved during the Brexit saga, and will allow this thesis to answer it‟s research question.

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3. Research Design

3.0 Introduction

This thesis will employ discourse analysis, or the analysis on the way in which language is used, as its primary method of analysis. This is due to the fact that discourse analysis is the classic method of analysis employed by those utilizing securitization theory, as well as the way in which the political world is shaped by the use of language and how it is employed and utilised to represent and frame issues.

The research material that has been collected and used within this thesis is comprised of political speeches and statements made, as well as policy documents that were created between between 2016 and mid 2020, with some reference to events in 2013 and 2015 that directly influenced the Brexit referendum.

This chapter will begin by exploring the theories of discourse analysis, in order to provide the reader with an understanding of the core research method employed within this thesis. It then goes on to detail regarding what data has been collected to form the corpus of this thesis, and what will be analysed within the empirical chapter.

3.1 Discourse analysis

As stated by Buzan et al. (1998), we study securitization through the study of discourse and political constellations. In line with this conceptual approach, this thesis will be employing the research methodology of discourse analysis (Bryman, 2012). It would therefore help to understand Discourse and discourse analysis are understood.

Discourse is simply “communication in speech or writing” (Cambridge dictionary, 2020), and we can study it by exploring at what point an argument with a “particular rhetorical and semiotic structure” has enough of an effect to convince its audience to tolerate the violation of rules that would have had to be obeyed otherwise (Buzan et al., 1998, p.25) Discourse can be broken down into several components: Vocabulary, Grammar, Text type/genre, Intertextuality, Discursive formation, and Culture (Macdonald, N/A, p.9).

While this Thesis will not be going in depth with all of these factors, due to the scope of this thesis and the constraints surrounding it, it is important to understand how discourse can be broken down and analysed.

A political constellation can be summarised as the political circumstances within any region, whether it be local, national or international. This includes the parties involved, their leadership, and the

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26 positions of the actors, as well as legal and political factors that are at play. The distribution of political forces also influences the form of a political constellation (Halabaku et al., 2019, p.13-14). There are also different forms of discourse, which are important to bear in mind. Firstly, we have „argument‟, where an attempt is made to convince an audience that what the writer or speaker is saying is correct, through the use of evidence and reason; secondly, you have „narration‟, where a story is told that often incorporates emotion and empathy; then, there is „descriptive‟ discourse, which invoked the five senses to help the audience visualise what is described; alongside this this, you have „expositional‟ discourse, where “relatively neutral language” is used to inform an audience of something, without the aim to persuade or evoke emotion (Literary Devices, N/A).

Discourse Analysis is a way of analysing language in all forms of communication, not simply spoken communication, and is therefore used in the analysis of texts (Bryman, 2012, p.528). Discourse Analysts view discourse as being more than just the simple usage of language, being more “constitutive of the social world that is a focus of interest of concern” (Bryman, 2012, p.528) than people would first assume.

Discourse Analysis as a practice therefore “emphasizes the way versions of the world, of society, events and inner psychological worlds are produced in discourse” (Bryman, 2012, p.528), and allows us to better understand what is happening in the world, and why, through the analysis of what is said and written.

Critical Discourse Analysis is one of the primary schools of Discourse analysis, and identifies discursive events as forming and being formed by social context or situations in which discourse takes place, by the institutions involved, as well as the social identities of individuals and groups involved (Glynos et al., 2009, p.17). It also focuses on how meanings within discourse are “a product of social and cultural relationships”, while also focusing on “how these may be realized in language” (Macdonald, N/A, p.6).

In CDA, the belief is that “the subject occupies „positions‟ created by language and text” (Macdonald, N/A, p.7) and that due to the way that documents travel within institutions, as well as between independent institutions, that they “generate power relations which are constitutive of the subject” (Macdonald, N/A, p.7). This leads to agency being “de-personalized” and being realized instead within the various institutions taking part in discourse and through social relations (Macdonald, N/A, p7).

The thesis will focus on the analysis of speeches by European officials and leaders, as well as official EU documents related to Brexit, which will allow me to showcase the ways in which the EU has securitized Brexit. Securitization theory is focused on the use of speech acts, and therefore, analysing

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27 the securitization of an issue requires discourse analysis which will be the primary methodology for this thesis. This is an approach to the analysis of “the ways in which language is used between people, both in written texts and spoken contexts” (Nordquist, 2020), giving analysts a way of “investigating meaning whether in conversation or culture” (Shaw and Bailey, 2009) which makes it the most suitable methodology for the investigation of securitization in politics.

3.2 Research Data

It is by using Discourse Analysis that the thesis will be able to analyse the speeches of the EU leaders and politicians mentioned above, as well as official documents related to the Brexit negotiations. This method of analysis is essential in order to answer the research question of this thesis: Has the EU framed Brexit as a security issue? And if so, how?

In order to answer this question, the thesis will be focussing on analysing the corpus of daya in order to ascertain whether or not EU leaders, from both member states and EU institutions, undertook securitizing moves that they undertake to represent Brexit as a security issue that posed a direct threat to the EU, the Member States, and European citizens. As highlighted in the theoretical chapter by Buzan et al. (2018), this threat can target any sector, such as the economic or societal sectors.

The dataset used is exclusively comprised of speeches made by politicians between 2016 and 2020, as well as policy documents that resulted from the political decisions of the EU and its member states. This includes speeches by leaders such as French President Emmanuel Macron which included comments placing Brexit within a “European Civil War” (Elysee, 2018) and Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar underlining the very real “possibility of a return fo violence” in Ireland (Leahy, 2018) as a result of the Brexit vote.

This thesis will, in particular, concentrate on the speeches made by key EU actors during the Brexit process, and will only be using the transcripts of specific speeches, or direct quotes that have been utilised by journalists who have covered the progress of the Brexit process and have been instrumental and recording the statements made by the politicians we will be following throughout this thesis. This data is relevant to the aims of this thesis due to the fact that it perfectly encapsulates the way the EU and its leading political actors have framed the Brexit debate, as well as the securitising move, the policy output, and the new status quo that Lucarelli (2019) outlines in her theory of collective securitization.

While it may be tempted to utilise paraphrased statements that would contribute to one view of the EU‟s behaviour throughout the Brexit discourse, this thesis will not use statements that are not

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28 directly attributable to these political actors, as these will not fulfil the required level of academic rigour that a proper analysis of securitization would require.

These speeches include those such as European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker highlighting that Brexit only benefited those “who want both the European Union and the United Kingdom to be weak” and highlighting the measures that had been taken to protect EU Citizens (European Commission, 2019 a); or Michel Barnier more recently where he states unequivocally that the EU intended to “defend the interests of its citizens, its consumers, its workers and its businesses” (European Commission, 2020 b).

Alongside these two speeches, I have collected a wide array of data to highlight the securitization of Brexit by the EU actors. I have collected speeches and speech acts from French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, French Presidents François Hollande and Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Former Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, Dutch Prime Minister Marke Rutte, Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz Former European Parliament Presidents Martin Schulz and Guy Verhofstadt, Former European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, lead Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier, and former European Council President Donald Tusk.

These were collected in the form of either official transcripts released by various government and institutional outlets, and direct statements quoted by media organisations and journalists. I was strict in ensuring that only quotes directly attributable to these actors were included in my corpus.

I have also collected documents produced by the European Commission, such as the Withdrawal Agreement, the Political Declaration, and the mandate for the negotiation of the future relationship with the UK. The 2017 White paper on the future of Europe and the way forward also forms part of my data.

This corpus of data includes speeches by 26 leading politicians, both from the Member States and the European Institutions, which are outlined in the below list with their total number of speech acts included in the empirical chapter:

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29 Member States European Parliament European Commission

Jean-Mark Ayrault (1) Martin Schulz (1) Michel Barnier (1) Francois Hollande (4) Guy Verhofstadt (1) Jean-Claude Juncker (4) Sebastian Kurz (1) Emmanuel Macron (5) Angela Merkel (5) Matteo Renzi(1) Mark Rutte (1) Leo Varadkar (1)

In total, including the speech acts made by politicians from the European Institutions listed in the table above, there were a total of 15 speech acts drawn from the European Institutions:

European Commission European Parliament European Council

11 3 1

This corpus provides the thesis with the appropriate material to carry out my analysis and ultimately address the research question due to the fact that the speech acts and discourse analysed was produced by the leading actors at the EU level, including heads of states and the heads of the various EU institutions. These all accurately represent the way that Brexit was presented by these actors, and allows us to analyse any securitization that took place during the Brexit process.

This will be accompanied by key EU documents related to Brexit, particularly Policy Outputs such as the Withdrawal Agreement and the negotiating guidelines that were produced by the EU and provided us a glimpse of their mentality entering the negotiations.

The dataset does, however, have some limitations.

To begin with, due to the only languages that I speak fluently being French and English, data collection was limited to what could be gathered in these two languages. In the event that this thesis needed to gain a broader understanding of statements made by politicians such as Angela Merkel

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30 when reported in newspaper articles, translation tools had to be employed in order to understand the text.

This dataset is also reliant on both transcripts published on official government websites, as well as recorded interviews and speeches, and in the event that these are unavailable, relies on quotes used in newspaper articles.

As this dataset is reliant on public speech acts made by these politicians, it does not include the private speeches made by these actors, or the private discussions between them which are not made public. While the latter of these could be pieced together based on comments relayed through journalists, as they are not direct speech acts, they are not included in this corpus of data.

The use of other data was considered, particularly the use of interviews with EU and member state officials, which would have been used to further investigate the representation of Brexit as a security threat to the EU, however, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this was unable to be incorporated within this thesis.

It is for this reason that the current dataset was selected and built, due to it being the most accessible, whilst also being robust in its representation of EU speech acts related to and directly targeting Brexit, it‟s causes, and it‟s effects on the EU.

Regardless of the limitations of the corpus of data, this thesis contributed to the understanding of EU security and politics through the analysis of the corpus of data outlined above.

3.3 Conclusion

This chapter has established that the method of analysis that would best achieve the goal of answering my research question is discourse analysis, due to the focus on speech as the unit to be analysed, and this lining up perfectly with the corpus of data that has been built.

It has also made explicit what the corpus of data is comprised of, and how the analysis of this corpus of data can contribute to EU studies and the understandings of EU security. This Thesis will now proceed to analyse the corpus of data, in order to answer the primary question of this thesis: Has the EU framed Brexit as a security issue? And if so, how?

In defence of the Union: how the European Union securitized Brexit