ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses how the activity of framing legitimizes certain interests and actors in the EU’s political process. It argues that frames play a vital part in constructing a European actorness and identity. Framing is important in many political systems but it is especially salient in the EU, where policy processes are both fluid and open. Indeed, policy-making in the EU is an exercise in the mobilization of ideas and common policy conceptualizations. The emphasis in this chapter is on how the issue of defence equipment has been framed by the European Commission in the 1990s as part of the classic European discourse on the European ‘malaise’ towards the US. It is argued that even though the political breakthrough for the issue of defence equipment is evident in the ongoing formation of a defence policy and a defence capacity in the EU, it has also for a long time been considered to be a question of Europe’s (civilian) economic and technological capacity towards the US. This was especially true in the 1990s, when the need for the EU to address the issue of European economic competitiveness and technological development was articulated more than it had been during any earlier period of EU’s history.
