Eastern Partnership and Security : Development of selected keywords from 2009 to 2021, with a focus on security

Abstract: The Eastern Partnership was founded in 2009 with three main areas of focus: one being security. The research questions: ‘What effect has the changing security situation had on the usage of the term security by the EU/joint statements by the Eastern Partnership on selected non-security terms from 2009 to 2021?’ and ‘How have the security terms been affected?’Using content analysis, sampling was kept to official statements concerning the partnership as a whole and do not include material from sub-co-operations, such as the Euronest Parliamentary Assembly. The coding, with a focus on ‘security’, includes several expressions that include security, such as; ‘energy security’; ‘human security’; ‘cyber security’; as well as ‘resolution of conflicts’ and ‘peaceful settlement’; while the codes included in the primary analysis are; ‘economic integration’; ‘stability’; ‘strategic’; ‘prosperity’ and ‘common values’. The theory of securitization was utilized due to its foundation in constructivism and the theory aims to explain how securitizing actors use speech acts to bring attention to issues. Findings show that ‘security’ has been used more in later years, while ‘stability’ is used frequently across all years with data. The selected non-security-related terms are used more overall than the selected security-related ones; a reason for this is that ‘economic integration’ is the core of the EU and one of the founding principles of the Eastern Partnership. Furthermore, one explanation why the non-security-related terms are used more could be that the Eastern Partnership and the EU do not always know where to put the focus, and as a weakness does not recognize the urgency of certain issues, and too little is done too late.