The Securitization and Eurocentric Narratives in the European Union's Climate Policy and Diplomacy

• Published date: 01 September 2025
• Author: Amlan Mishra
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/cep4.70019
• Section: Practice and Policy

Contemporary European Politics

PRACTICE AND POLI CY

The Securitization and Eurocentric Narratives in the

European Union's Climate Policy and Diplomacy

Amlan Mishra

ICIMOD, Kathmandu, Nepal

Correspondence: Amlan Mishra (amlanmishra4@gmail.com)

Received: 5 May 2025 | Revised: 24 June 2025 | Accepted: 30 July 2025

Keywords: climate diplomacy | climate politics| Eurocentrism | European Green Deal | European Union | securitization

ABSTRACT

Post the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, the EU has increasingly adopted climate and energy policy as a matter of security, developing a

paradigm of climate‐energy‐security nexus in the climate policymaking and diplomacy of the EU. This paper argues that the

connotations of such a nexus showcase the increasing securitization and Eurocentrism in the EU's climate action, a significant change

from its historical role as a ‘leader‐by‐example’in undertaking climate action. Beyond showcasing the theoretical framings of

securitization and Eurocentrism, the paper seeks to highlight how the key policies of the ‘internal’European Green Deal, especially the

REPowerEU and CBAM, are increasingly influenced by these ideals. The paper also examines the Eurocentric narratives in the

‘external’outreach of EU's climate diplomacy, evolving beyond colonial epistemologies to reflect watered down ambitions and

promote green mineral extraction under the broader narrative of green transition.

1 | Introduction

In the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the European

Union (EU) has increasingly framed its climate and energy

policies around geopolitical urgency and security. This shift has

driven strategies to bolster energy independence and domestic

resilience. At the 28th Conference of Parties (COP28), the EU's

27 governments mandated pushing a global agreement to phase

out ‘unabated’fossil fuels and to triple renewable energy

capacity and double energy efficiency by 2030 (Council of the

European Union 2023). However, when the Alliance of Small

Island States proposed completely stopping fossil fuel use and

production, the EU opposed it, reflecting tensions between its

ambitious rhetoric and domestic political realities. This stance

contrasts with the EU's leadership at COP26 in Glasgow, where

it helped launch ambitious initiatives like the Global Methane

Pledge, the Just Energy Transition Partnership with South

Africa, and the Glasgow Leaders’Declaration on Forests and

Land Use (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate

Change UNFCCC 2022; European Commission 2021a). These

contrasts showcase how the EU's ‘leader‐by‐example’approach

in international climate diplomacy is now complicated by geo-

political and domestic pressures.

Geopolitical considerations, triggered by the energy crisis as a

result of the Russo‐Ukrainian war, have seen the rise of a

climate‐energy‐security nexus within the EU's climate policies

and diplomacy (Goldthau and Youngs 2023). By increasingly

securitizing climate policy under the lens of energy indepen-

dence, the EU has looked to prioritize and develop more

‘domestic‐first’protectionist policies and agendas around cli-

mate change, such as the European Green New Deal (EGD), the

REPowerEU plan, the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism

(CBAM), as well as diminishing its leadership by example

approach on the global stage. There is also an increased Euro-

centric approach to the policymaking of the EU that is reflected

in its drive to source resources from the Global South in an

ecologically extractive and colonial model (Bogojević2024).

This paper engages with these shifts by offering a qualitative policy

analysis grounded in document‐based methods. Specifically, it

draws on official EU communications, legislative proposals and

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution‐NonCommercial‐NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work

is properly cited, the use is non‐commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.

© 2025 The Author(s). Contemporary European Politics published by University Association of Contemporary European Studies and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

1of12Contemporary European Politics, 2025; 3:e70019

https://doi.org/10.1002/cep4.70019