What kind of cyber actor? The European Commission’s vision of the EU cyber-actorness

Like the rest of the world, the European Union (EU) has become increasingly interested in cyber issues (e.g. Artificial Intelligence, robotics, cyber security) because they posed as a threat to Europe’s security and prosperity. EU institutions and member states have been targets of cyber-crime, cyber-espionage and cyber-attacks (Christou, 2019). The EU has also become increasingly active on cyber issues internally and internationally as part of its own integration process, through which the EU is gradually developing itself as a regional and global cyber actor. Therefore, the EU has adopted plenty of official documents and legal acts that are focused on cyber issues. The European Commission (EC) has been one of the EU institutions at the front of this activity. However, our knowledge about its vision of EU cyber-actorness is far from complete. Existing texts, including those specifically addressing the EU, are of a primarily policy-oriented nature. Scholars have mainly focused on the cyber-security issue (Sliwinski, 2014; Carrapico & Barrinha, 2017; Christou, 2018; 2019), EU’s role as a cyber-power (Dunn Cavelty, 2018; Sliwinski), and EU international cooperation in this area (Renard, 2018; Pawlak, 2014; 2019). The question of what kind of cyber actor the EU is now, and what kind of cyber actor it should be in the future, is not sufficiently explored. So, this paper will explore the concept of the EU as a cyber actor and asks about the EC vision of EU cyber-actorness. In doing so, statements, documents, and legal proposals will be analyzed. This study intends to complement the study gap using a constructivist paradigm. It indicates that the language used by an actor affects its identity and determines the actions (and role) it takes.