Participation of Delphine Deschaux-Dutard at ISA 2019

Delphine Deschaux-Dutard will participate in the upcoming 60th Annual convention of the International Studies Association (ISA 2019). Her talk – entitled “Can the EU cope with cyber challenges? Potentials and limits of the EU cybersecurity architecture” - will be part of the panel on the governance of new technologies in the European Union. The event will be held in Toronto (Ontario, Canada) on March 27th - 30th 2019.

This paper aims at analysing EU cybersecurity (and moreover cyberdefence) architecture. As cyberspace security has become an unavoidable issue, the EU has developed a Cyber Security Strategy (which entails cyber defence aspects). But how far can there be a common European cyberstrategy when it comes to military issues in the cyberspace? What are the potentials and limits of the EU as a cyber actor confronted with state sovereignty on those innovative issues? The paper will mainly rely on a constructivist approach. The first part will examine the normative and institutional environment in which EU cybersecurity architecture takes place to analyse the specificity of the issue in the context of the European integration. The second part will aim at demonstrating that EU cybersecurity is heavily placed under a double normative constraint: the constraining member states’ representations, and the existence of another normative framework within NATO. Here the article will aim at demonstrating that EU cyber defence normative and material (through the creation of concrete capacities) initiatives not only reflect tensions existing between the European institutions about the Europeanization of cyber issues, but also the tensions and divergences between the member states about how the EU should develop its cybercapacities.

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