A prevailing argument in the EU literature centers on the relative roles of the European Commission and the European Council during crises, with some contending that the Commission has been sidelined as national governments move to reassert their authority. This paper offers a different reading of that debate by drawing on crisis management research, organizational learning studies, and institutional theory to explain how the Commission's responses to one crisis became institutionalized and shaped its governance approach in subsequent crises. In contrast to single-case studies or analytical “snapshots,” this approach takes a mid-range temporality perspective to show how institutional power relations in crisis management change over time. Using original interviews and text analysis to explore the dynamics of crisis management over the course of these two crises, our analysis shows the Commission used the opportunity to increase its influence in shaping the architecture of the Union's economic governance.

Existing studies on the impact of crises on the EU often overlook the meta-level effects wrought by a series of repeated crises and the continuous mobilization of crisis management activities. This chapter addresses that gap, not by studying the role of crises in any particular sector, institution, or level but rather by drawing on empirical material that reveals the remarkably broad extent to which crisis management has permeated European governance in general. The argument is that European governance, defined as the actors, rules, tools, practices, and norms that attempt to steer collective outcomes across the EU, has been increasingly infused with crisis-oriented dynamics. The implications of the move from European governance to ‘permanent crisis governance’ are significant, not only for how the EU works as a shared decision-making system across a host of policy areas but also for what the EU is as a political entity.

This article advances research on ‘collective securitisation’ by theorising how ostensibly separate securitisation processes within different international organisations (IOs) interact and shape each other’s policy outcomes. Focusing on climate change adaptation within the United Nations (UN) and European Union (EU), the study uses an extensive database of documents (1972–2023) and interviews with officials to trace these dynamics. The analysis reveals that the UN initially securitised climate change through a risk-oriented approach emphasising long-term risk management, subsequently influencing the EU’s adaptation policies. Conversely, the EU intermittently reintroduced threat-based framing into the UN, highlighting recursive interactions between these organisations. Findings suggest key moments of cross-organisational influence, notably during the audience acceptance and policy output stages. By incorporating insights from transnational policy learning and norm diffusion, the paper theorises precisely how and when these interactions occur, enriching the analytical framework of Collective Securitisation. This article contributes to understanding how international organisations’ securitisation processes interact and shape climate adaptation policies, emphasising the nuanced interplay between threat-based and risk-based logics.

Using a securitization lens, this article explores the climate adaptation discourse and its impact on the making and implementation of adaptation strategies in Sweden. The main goal is to discern whether climate change is understood and addressed as a security issue within Swedish climate adaptation policy, examining its practical implications from national to local levels. We scrutinize the discourses employed to frame climate adaptation and assess whether these align with threatification, riskification, or normal politics. We explore the actors and tools involved in creating this framing. Our findings reveal examples of threat- and risk-oriented securitizations of climate adaptation strategy; however, most evidence highlights discourses and practices associated with normal politics across governance levels. Nationally, climate adaptation is managed akin to any other policy domain. Prioritization of adaptation goals takes place through centralized decision-making, then monitored through accountability mechanisms spanning national, subregional, and local levels. The national government maintains financial and monitoring control throughout this chain. Municipalities possess significant autonomy in determining the means and methods to achieve adaptation objectives. This indicates that some securitization, but mainly normal policymaking, describes climate change adaption in Sweden - an outcome strongly influenced by organizational fragmentation, scarce resources, and a pronounced role for experts.

Purpose - This paper offers an empirical overview of European emergency managers' institutional arrangements and guidelines for using social media in risk and crisis communication.

Design/methodology/approach - The authors collected and analysed material including publicly accessible relevant legal acts, policy documents, official guidelines, and press reports in eight European countries – Germany, Italy, Belgium, Sweden, Hungary, Finland, Norway, and Estonia. Additionally, the authors carried out 95 interviews with emergency managers in the eight countries between September 2019 and February 2020.

Findings - The authors found that emergency management institutions' social media usage is rarely centrally controlled and social media crisis communication was regulated with the same guidelines as crisis communication on traditional media. Considering this study's findings against the backdrop of existing research and practice, the authors find support for a “mixed arrangement” model by which centralised policies work in tandem with decentralised practices on an ad hoc basis.

Practical implications - Comparative insights about institutional arrangements and procedural guidelines on social media crisis communication in the studied countries could inform the future policies concerning social media use in other emergency management systems.

Originality/value - This study includes novel, cross-national comparative data on the institutional arrangements and guidelines for using social media in emergency management in the context of Europe.

In this article, we provide an overview of the ways in which disaster managers in eight European countries use social media to mitigate people's vulnerability to hazards. Our document analysis and 95 expert interviews in Germany, Italy, Belgium, Sweden, Hungary, Finland, Norway, and Estonia revealed six distinct institutional social media practices that may reduce disaster vulnerability: sharing educational guidelines, informing and warning the public, identifying citizens' concerns, identifying missing persons, sharing guidelines during disaster, and organizing volunteers. We discuss how these practices could affect people's ability to access, understand, and react adequately to information about risks and hazards. Our findings can be used to improve guidelines for official crisis communication on social media and demonstrate the value of using social media in disaster risk reduction.

Climate change is recognized today not just as a pressing and prominent issue on government agendas but also one that has been increasingly ‘securitized’ in a variety of national and global settings. We know little, however, if climate change adaptation, as a subset of climate action, has followed a similarly securitized path. This article addresses that question, exploring not only if climate change adaptation has been securitized but also what type of securitization – threat-oriented or risk-oriented – has emerged. Turning our empirical focus to three national settings of Norway, Sweden, and The Netherlands, we look for signs of securitization as well as whether securitization has been facilitated, shaped, or even blocked by existing governance features in each setting. We use this study to link the securitization literature with environmental governance approaches by building a novel analytical framework. Our findings show some intriguing and unexpected patterns, including evidence of risk-oriented securitization couched nevertheless as ‘business as usual’. We contribute to the growing debate on securitization in environmental governance while also casting new light on national climate change adaptation processes.

This study explores the manifestations of riskification in climate change adaptation (CCA) across four European cities, examining the roles of actors, discourses, and tools. Through comparative analysis, it aims to delineate local riskification, identifying similarities and differences among the cases. Three intervening factors – ideational frameworks, organization of government, and actor networks – are assessed to comprehend the amplification or deceleration of riskification processes locally. Findings reveal that ideational frameworks shape responses to climate change challenges within each case, while government organization influences CCA strategies and funding mechanisms. Actor networks play a pivotal role in shaping CCA efforts, including measurement, modeling, and monitoring. Despite commonalities, the analysis revealed that the intervening factors are further conditioned in each specific case, albeit in different ways, by aspects not initially considered: the influence of risk culture, risk memory, and technocratic governance in local CCA in each situation. These nuances produce variations of riskification that are locally distinct but equally depoliticize climate change risks, overshadowing broader societal implications and impeding transformative approaches. In particular, the dominance of riskified CCA approaches with technocratic characteristics and limited urgency may hinder innovative strategies required for addressing complex CCA challenges.

A seemingly continuous stream of crises in Europe has turned scholarly agendas towards assessment of the EU's management of crises. Those assessments vary widely, depending on the analytical focus and criteria used. This paper introduces three assessment criteria drawn from crisis research that pertain to the detection of a crisis, the mobilization of necessary resources, and the nature of the public debate about critical choices made in times of crisis. We relate these crisis management insights to long-standing debates in European integration theory to help link traditional crisis management assessments with EU-focused theorizing. The article offers a framework for assessment of the EU's performance as a crisis manager. We illustrate the utility of the framework with a brief application to the EU's response to Covid-19. We assess the EU's performance in positive terms: the Union acted quickly after a somewhat slow start and was very effective in mobilizing a variety of resources. At the same time, we note that major policy choices were made without a significant public debate about potential effects on the future character of the Union.

While social vulnerability in the face of disasters has received increasing academic attention, relatively little is known about the extent to which that knowledge is reflected in practice by institutions involved in disaster management. This study charts the practitioners’ approaches to disaster vulnerability in eight European countries: Belgium; Estonia; Finland; Germany; Hungary; Italy; Norway; and Sweden. It draws on a comparative document analysis and 95 interviews with disaster managers and reveals significant differences across countries in terms of the ontology of vulnerability, its sources, reduction strategies, and the allocation of related duties. To advance the debate and provide conceptual clarity, we put forward a heuristic model to facilitate different understandings of vulnerability along the dimensions of human agency and technological structures as well as social support through private relations and state actors. This could guide risk analysis of and planning for major hazards and could be adapted further to particular types of disasters.