This paper explores the role of emotions in the securitisation of migration and the strengthening of the EU’s external borders during the 2015-2016 refugee crisis and the new Pact on Migration and Asylum. It first examines the literature on the EU's Integrated Border Management and how the militarisation and externalisation of the EU's common external borders were made possible through the framing of migration as a security threat. Then, it integrates the study of emotions into this process, drawing upon the literature on emotions in securitisation theory in general, and the securitisation of migration in specific, to understand how the framing of migration as a security threat involves affects and emotions. Drawing upon the introduction of emotion-focused research methods in EU policy, the paper explores how the affective construction of migration as a security threat continuously supports restrictive border policies in the EU's discursive realm. Through an Emotion Discourse Analysis (EDA) of the Commission’s speeches published during the periods of 2015-2016 and 2023-2024, the paper concludes that fear and pity are crucial emotions to the securitisation of migration and the resulting strengthening of the EU’s common external borders in both periods. While fear supports a mass migration narrative that justifies the strengthening of the EU's external borders, pity supports a migrant victim narrative that is used by the EU to justify its interventions in the Mediterranean and other border zones to curb migrant smuggling, further strengthening its external borders.

In an era marked by complex global events like the COVID-19 pandemic, rising geopolitical tensions, Russian assertiveness, China's expanding influence, Brexit, the refugee crisis, and the Ukraine conflict, the European Union (EU) is compelled to present a unified stance on key issues such as threat assessment, military readiness, and diplomatic efforts. This need is underscored by the United States' (US) reduced involvement in European affairs, bringing the EU's Strategic Autonomy and Strategic Compass into sharper focus and influencing discussions on its strategic culture in security and defense.

This paper examines the extent to which the EU has developed a cohesive strategic culture that guides its foreign policy and global interactions. It explores how this culture, embodying the Union's collective identity, shapes its foreign policy decisions and the challenges in aligning the diverse security and defense perspectives of its member states. It particularly focuses on the strategic cultures of Germany and France during the 2014 Ukrainian crisis, using this as a case study to understand the impact of individual member states on the EU’s collective security and defense policy. The analysis also discusses the challenges and possibilities of harmonizing different national strategies within the EU and the importance of their convergence for a unified strategic culture.

This article aims to contribute significantly to the discourse on integrating diverse national strategies within the EU, enhancing understanding of its evolving strategic culture in a dynamic geopolitical environment. It underscores the importance of understanding the EU’s role in international relations, especially in light of current global challenges and changes, emphasizing the significance of strategic culture in shaping the EU’s responses to these challenges.

Disinformation, information manipulation and interference are forms of hybrid threats manifesting across the world. The threat is expanding, and a growing number of actors, mainly originating from the EU’s Eastern neighbourhood are using an increasing number of tactics. This study, besides the conceptualisation of the terms disinformation and resilience, intends to inspect the agencies created, the policies and instruments used by the European Community and its Member States meant to tackle this phenomenon. More precisely, the research is aimed at examining the societal dimension of resilience building to disinformation originating from the EU’s eastern vicinity, by implementing the whole-of-society approach. While the qualitative assessment of the Disinformation Resilience Index and of the EU Disinformation Review will reveal the level of exposure and vulnerability of certain EU member states to disinformation, the study also focuses on inspecting the actual measures that were taken to counter disinformation by bolstering societal resilience. Besides evaluating the efficiency of the initiatives launched at Community level (such as, the Rapid Alert System against Disinformation or the EEAS Eastern Stratcom), the paper also prioritizes familiarizing the reader with disinformation countering measures launched at the level of the civil society (EU DisinfoLab, ECAS’s Civil Society Against Disinformation coalition, Bellingcat, ReBaltica etc.)