As previous crises such as Libya and Iraq have revealed, the EU is still suffering from a deficient com¬mon security identity which is held to be a necessary pre-requisite for EU actorness. A comparative approach to the French, German, and British reactions to the annexation of the Crimea could help to disclose the EU’s vertical incoherence by exploring when and how the ‘Brussels actors’ (Commission, Council) and the three member states securitised ‘Crimea’ in early 2014. The securitization model – as proposed by Buzan, Waever and de Wilde – seems well suited to offer analytical criteria for the comparison. The research question therefore reads: Who securitized what, when, and how in the Crimea annexation case? The analysis will reveal to what extent ideational structural deficits of the CFSP remain and are therefore apt to hinder a common foreign policy in the future.
