Addressing Hybrid Threats: European Law and Policies(Elgar Studies in European Law and Policy)

Combining rich theoretical analysis with real-world examples, this erudite book navigates EU law in the context of hybrid threats, examining how security issues affect themes of constitutional law at the heart of a democratic system. Presenting doctrinal and historical insights, the book not only considers the different types of hybrid threats, but also how they are increasingly showing that traditional understandings of security risk are becoming obsolete. Bringing together leading experts in the fields of security, anthropology, and EU law, chapters map out the EU and NATO’s responses to five hybrid threats: disinformation, instrumentalisation of migration, cyberthreats, abuses of energy resources, and lawfare. The book focuses on both security and legal issues and answers two interrelated questions: what is the nature of a hybrid threat? And what legal tools are available to the EU to protect its citizens from those threats? The answers to these questions reveal how hybrid threats put increased tension on the capacity of a democratic system to resist rival models. Interdisciplinary in scope, this will be a fundamental resource for researchers, academics and students of European law, terrorism and security law, politics, and international relations. Legal practitioners with a keen interest in EU constitutional law, common foreign and security policy, and internal market regulation will similarly find this to be an indispensable read.

Table of Contents:
Contents: 1 The seriousness of vagueness: introducing European law and policies against hybrid threats 1 2 Legal aspects of hybrid threats: making sense of the field 21 3 From hybrid warfare to ‘cybrid’ threats – and back? Concepts, challenges, responses 40 4 Why disinformation is here to stay. A socio-technical analysis of disinformation as a hybrid threat 57 5 The EU’s ‘hybrid’ migration wars: a case of mistaken identity 84 6 The EU response to the instrumentalisation of migration: towards normalised derogations, intensified border surveillance and flexible responsibility? 105 7 Soft authoritarian lawfare. Threats to democracy from within 131 8 EU energy security policy and hybrid threats 150

About the Author :
Edited by Luigi Lonardo, Lecturer in EU Law, School of Law, University College Cork, Ireland

Review :
‘This book draws together some of the leading thinkers on the various hybrid threats which increasingly dominate the EU’s institutional agenda. In drawing together theoretical and practical insights on the nature of these threats, the book could not be more timely or relevant.’ ‘This timely and important book addresses the pressing issue of hybrid threats from different angles in a multidisciplinary analysis. It provides a very useful and new perspective on the topic and its relevance for the EU. The contributions show the diversity of hybrid threats and the different and innovative ways of how the EU has to and is dealing with them.’