EU Security Discourse: Creating New Regional Boundaries in the Mediterranean and Gulf Regions

Abstract

The European Union (EU) as an international actor has slowly been incorporated into geopolitical reality, by academics and other international actors. This makes it all the more important to understand how the EU sees the world in which it interacts and what role security matters play in this construction. In this article we will analyse how the EU constructs regions. We will be looking at how the Mediterranean and the Gulf in particular are represented as regions by the EU. The EU relationship with the Mediterranean is quite developed, but as to the Gulf there is still much to do. This is slowly changing; recently the EU began considering a regional approach due to increasing security concerns. The current trend in discourse incorporates the Gulf countries into a wider Middle East, perhaps signalling the beginning of a coherent regional strategy for what could become another area of insecurity in EU eyes.