United we stand in metaphors: EU authority and incomplete politicisation of the crisis in Ukraine

Abstract

This article analyses the dynamics of the politicisation and depoliticisation of the EU response to the 2014 crisis in Ukraine through the perspective of metaphorical framing. This crisis constituted an unquestioned priority in EU foreign policy, requiring the mobilisation of many actors articulating divergent positions, but the EU adopted a robust response to the crisis. This paper explains how early polarization of EU member states’ positions about response to the Ukrainian crisis has been neutralised and depoliticised through the adoption of collective EU positions towards Ukraine and Russia in 2014, in the ENP Review in 2015 and European Union Global Strategy in 2016. This paper attributes the neutralisation of politicisation moves to the consistency of metaphorical frames employed in the EU response to the crisis in Ukraine with the overall framing of the European Neighbourhood Policy.