ABSTRACT
The European Defence Agency (EDA) and the European Parliament’s Subcommittee on Security and Defence (SEDE), thanks to public hearings, conferences, workshops, strategic documents, research papers and reports, are forming a ‘discursive coalition’ to promote the institutionalisation of defence research at the EU level. Moreover, EDA and SEDE have developed important informal links to shape the institutionalisation of defence research at the EU level. Hence, this chapter aims to identify the main elements of this discourse and to test this argument on the recent development in the EU defence research field. The chapter focuses through the lens of discursive institutionalism on the importance of ‘discourse coalitions’ in shaping EU defence policy-making. Empirically, it clarifies the role of two, often underestimated, actors in the EU governance of security and defence technologies.
