Publication
Constructing Security for the Twin Transitions: The Tragedy of EU Law at the Intersection of Climate and AI Governance
In this article, Barrie Sander, Assistant Professor of International Law, adopts a narrative theoretical lens to examine how security is constructed, contested, and narrated within three EU regulatory frameworks at the intersection of climate and AI governance.
- Author
- Barrie Sander
- Date
- 31 March 2026
- Links
- Read the full article here
As the EU continues to pursue a strategy of twinning the green and digital transitions, heightened expectations are placed on AI technologies to combat climate change. At the same time, relying on AI raises a range of security concerns. According to Barrie Sander, EU regulations portray the EU as a values-driven actor with green, rights-based and democratic ambitions, yet these aspirations are constrained by a 'restricted vision' of security.
Security threats are identified, framed and addressed in ways that legitimate harmful patterns of exploitation affecting local communities, people on the move, and digital activists. The article shows that broader structural dynamics—such as overconsumption, border externalisation, and data extractive informational capitalism—are largely overlooked. As a result, EU laws rhetorically invoke progressive ideals but largely administer continuity, leaving existing power structures and inequalities relatively unchallenged.
More specifically, the CRMA, AIA, and DSA each adopt a narrow focus that legitimates extractivism, technological control, and corporate power. However, Sander shows that there are also 'footholds' within these regulations that allow dominant understandings of security to be contested, creating space for counter-narratives and future reimaginings of EU law.