Energy security has been a priority on the European Union’s (EU) agenda for the last decade. However, the significance of this issue escalated in the early 2000s following the accession of former Eastern Bloc countries to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which coincided with increased Alliance attention on energy security as a strategic concern. The onset of the war in Ukraine on February 24, 2022, marked a period of heightened energy security uncertainty in Europe, bringing the issue to the forefront of both EU and NATO institutional discourse.

This study employs Securitization Theory to explore the research question: How do the European Union and NATO differ in their institutional securitization of energy security during the period 2022-2024? Drawing on qualitative discourse analysis, it examines official institutional documents, statements, and strategic communications issued by both organizations.

The analysis shows that energy security was framed as a security concern by both organizations throughout the period under review, although it was articulated in distinct ways, reflecting each organization’s institutional context and mandate. By comparatively analyzing those discursive practices, the article contributes to the literature on securitization and international organizations by highlighting variation in how energy security is framed during periods of crisis.

Environmental issues have been at the forefront of global policy agendas as one of the most defining challenges of the 21^st century. Increasingly, this conversation has extended to the defence sector, which is confronting its carbon ‘bootprint’. The incorporation of environmental discourses within defence has contributed to the development of a green defence agenda in the EU through its Climate Change and Defence Roadmap (2020/2022) and in NATO with the publication of its Climate Change and Security Action Plan (2021). These policy frameworks aim to guide the integration of climate change considerations into EU and NATO defence capabilities and military operations, making them ‘greener’ and helping address their defence-related emissions.

While these efforts indicate the prioritisation of a more environmentally conscious policy approach, the uncertain and fluctuating conditions in which political action occurs mean that the extent to which the EU and NATO can effectively mitigate the environmental consequences of their defence sectors remains a point of scepticism. Such scepticism has particularly come to light since the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, in which there has been a shift in the geopolitical environment and a drive to strengthen conventional defence. Thus, doubts persist about whether defence and environmentalism can go hand in hand and whether the greening of defence amounts to an act of greenwashing.

Recognising this scepticism, my PhD aims to deconstruct the EU and NATO's green defence frameworks and their underpinning policymaking processes to understand how we can rearticulate political action so as not to pursue irreversible environmental harm. I address the challenges of (a) acting politically in fluctuating, uncertain times and (b) avoiding irreversible environmental harm conceptually, through a focus on political ethics as a means to scrutinise green defence policy consequences.

Presenting the initial empirical findings of my PhD research, this paper introduces green defence and examines how the EU and NATO’s defence sectors aim to address the urgency of climate change through their recalibrated greening defence frameworks.

Gathering information and perspectives from all impacted groups is a core component of strategic foresight; it supports an accurate assessment of trends and aids in building preparedness for and resilience against negative spill-over effects. Barriers to accessing impacted groups represent a key concern for policymakers and civil society organizations who aim to apply foresight methods and approaches to high-risk contexts.

Understanding how to include the most vulnerable and isolated groups when developing future-informed, resilient policy systems in the EU’s "Eastern Neighbourhood" countries is increasingly critical given the direct consequences and spill-over effects of rekindled wars and the COVID-19 pandemic observed since 2020. Governments and civil society organizations experience new and ongoing challenges to establishing strategic relations and partnerships with these countries, particularly with actors at the local level. The resilience-building and foresight approaches that these strategic partners support may function effectively in stable contexts. However, they can be structurally misaligned with the political and institutional realities of high-risk contexts where constrained civic space, limited policy autonomy, and military and territorial conflict affect the conditions under which futures can be collectively imagined.

This article contends that, without employing appropriate adaptations to meet domestic and local realities, strategic foresight can function as an exclusionary and territorializing practice that extends EU governance rationalities while reproducing center–periphery distinctions between a resilient “EU-ropean core” and a governable, crisis-prone “neighbourhood”. Rather than interpreting limited uptake or low effectiveness of foresight approaches in high-risk contexts merely as an implementation or capacity deficit, these outcomes indicate hierarchical integration and epistemic asymmetry, where Western European risk imaginaries and participation norms are privileged, while local knowledge and situated precarity are marginalized. Drawing on Critical European Integration theory to better understand and account for the hierarchal dimensions within EU external action in its Eastern Neighbourhood, the article positions high-risk contexts not as sites of policy diffusion, but instead for interrogating the constructions and limitations of collectively imagining Europe’s future in a multipolar world.

Two practical approaches for employing strategic foresight in high-risk contexts in the EU’s Eastern Neighbourhood are proposed, explicitly addressing the core challenge of limited access to impacted groups. These approaches target alignment with contexts representing high volatility and risk, thus enhancing inclusivity, responsiveness, and effectiveness. They furthermore operationalize the EU’s differentiation principle, tailoring foresight-based practices to the capacities and constraints of its “neighbourhoods,” while maintaining the normative and anticipatory principles central to European strategic governance.

Frontex is one of the most prominent actors of the European Union (EU) security framework. As a multi-level agency, Frontex staff interacts both at headquarters and in field operations. Existing research suggests that such interactions are often informed or even shaped by national stereotypes. For instance, Perkowski (2017, p. 200) reports that Frontex staff view Bulgarian border guards as lacking a ‘tradition and a history of human rights’, whereas Scandinavians are seen to respect carefully the conditions of asylum applicants. Although these insights are thought-provoking, there is no systematic empirical evidence on how such national stereotypes are shared across individuals working for Frontex, both at the headquarters and among field staff - such as standing corps. Against this background, the paper asks: how do national stereotypes influence the interactions among Frontex headquarters staff and standing corps?

Drawing on social psychology, national stereotypes are defined as the ‘attribution of specific traits to social groups’ (Correll et al., 2010, p. 46) based on their nationality. They function as automatic cognitive shortcuts, especially under conditions of crisis and uncertainty (Stewart & Raihani, 2023) – characteristic of Frontex’s work. Combining this perspective with a sociological lens, the study focuses on the lived experiences of the agency's staff and the profiles of individuals displaying such stereotypes – paying attention to the staff’s background in terms of education and career, but also their professional practices and habits (Georgakakis & Rowell, 2013). The combination of the two theoretical approaches allows us to examine how the micro-cognitive processes of stereotyping are embedded in routine bureaucratic practices at Frontex.

Methodologically, the paper draws on semi-structured interviews to be conducted in Warsaw with 30 Frontex employees from the "Operations” Division. The staff from the division interface continuously with Standing Corps and thus provide privileged insight into Frontex's multi-level implementation of security policies. The findings will offer new insights into bureaucratic practices within the agency, especially the use of national stereotypes as a form of categorization and boundary-drawing inside Frontex, and broader dynamics of EU security policies.