EU law: The view from European schools of security

Security has much to do with law. Security practice can take the form of law breaking but also of new law making. The law can be seen as a security threat, while security (as a state of being) is often guaranteed by the law. Moreover, law scholars write about security (the condition of being secure), and sometimes also about securitization (the practice of security, often extraordinary emergency politics to defend against a threat).

European schools of security, namely the Copenhagen-, Paris- and the Welsh school all developed in the empirical context of the (ever closer) European Union (EU). The EU is based on the rule of law. Meaning that law is constitutive of its very existence. And yet – to my knowledge - no work exists that comprehensively examines the position of these European schools of security vis-a-vis European Union law. This chapter aims to remedy this lacuna. It does so by examining five distinct lines of inquiry originating from the different theoretical framework, in the process establishing both what security studies tells us about EU law, and what the EU tells us about security and securitization.