The collective securitization of aviation in the European Union through association with terrorism

ABSTRACT This article analyses the expansion of European Union cooperation on aviation security using the framework of collective securitization. It establishes how 9/11 was a precipitating event that put terrorism and aviation security in the spotlight. 9/11 changed the collectively held understanding of the security threat posed by terrorism sufficiently to establish aviation security as a common policy framework rather than a national issue. 9/11 was therefore used by EU actors to convince the EU Member States that they all faced one collective terrorist threat. The subsequent institutionalization of this cooperation contributed to a routinization of aviation practices in the EU. As a result of the association between terrorism and aviation, 9/11 pushed EU Member States into taking action on aviation security. This caused the Member States to acknowledge the need for both the highest possible standards of aviation security and the harmonized enforcement of these standards.