Governing Knowledge, Shaping Europe: Research Security in the EU’s Geopolitical Turn

This article examines how the European Union’s turn to research and knowledge security reflects a deeper transformation in its geopolitical identity. Moving beyond the language of “technological sovereignty,” it conceptualises this shift as the emergence of an epistemic dimension of sovereignty—one that governs not only infrastructures and technologies but the very conditions of knowledge production and exchange. Drawing on Balzacq’s (2010) practice-based theory of securitization, the study introduces the notion of securitization through governance to capture how the EU embeds security rationales within bureaucratic and regulatory instruments rather than through exceptional measures. Empirically, the analysis traces the evolution of EU and national frameworks between 2013 and 2025, focusing on how supranational discourse is translated into national practice in five member states: Germany, the Netherlands, Finland, Italy, and Hungary. The findings show that securitization unfolds as a multi-level process of coordination and translation, in which EU norms are adapted through national institutions and research organizations. This distributed configuration produces a distinctly European form of geopolitical pragmatism—one that seeks to reconcile openness with protection, values with interests, and academic freedom with strategic control. By revealing how security becomes a routine condition of research governance, the article argues that the EU performs its geopolitical actorness not through coercion but through the regulation of vulnerability—governing knowledge as both a resource and a risk.