ABSTRACT
The notion of critical infrastructure protection (CIP) can be traced back to the Second World War (Collier and Lakoff 2008), when entire societies and economies became the target of strategic bombing. Coupled with the threat of nuclear warfare over the following decades, this stimulated comprehensive contingency planning on how to protect critical command and production processes from massive devastation. In this context the European integration project started out in crucial economic sectors for war-fighting, namely coal and steel, followed by the dual-use sector of nuclear power. Further integration steps can similarly be read as attempts to secure critical economic sectors and infrastructures (Badenoch and Fickers 2010), first as a result of economic spill-over effects of the Common Market and later also in response to severe accidents and dangerous technologies (Beck 1986). However, this article only analyses a much more recent and specific framing of the EU to CIP, namely the European Programme for Critical Infrastructure Protection (EPCIP).1 The 2005 policy programme documents the EU’s rising ambitions as a security actor as well as the associated challenges for comprehensive security governance.
