Normalization in reverse: Crises and the securitization of EU policies

Research on the normalization of the EU’s Common Foreign and Secuity Policy (CFSP) has shown that the CFSP has become part of standard EU governance through institutional adaptations, changing practices and legal and procedural shifts. This paper draws on this normalization literature but argues that recent crises—Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, uncertainty about US commitments under Trump, and intensifying geopolitical and geoeconomic rivalry—have triggered what we refer to as a normalization in reverse whereby other policy domains are increasingly securitized. Linked to the EU’s quest for strategic autonomy, policy domains beyond the CFSP, including trade, space, competition, industrial policy, technology regulation and investment screening, are increasingly designed and applied for security purposes. They are also linked to goals traditionally associated with CFSP, like resilience, deterrence, strategic signaling and geopolitical risk management. This paper describes these changes, trace their link to strategic autonomy, and conceptualize them as a form of “normalization in reverse,” in which other policy fields take on CFSP-like goals and logics. The paper concludes by discussing the implications for EU governance and for the evolving boundary between ordinary and security politics.