Securitization of the Threat of the Belarusian Authoritarian Regime in the European Union

This bachelor thesis is based on the concept of securitization applied to the issue of authoritarian regimes. Its aim is to examine the European Union's stance on the Belarusian authoritarian regime and to assess whether the European Union securitized the threat of this regime between the years 2020 and 2022. At the same time, the author raises the complementary question of whether the securitization process had been successful. In the theoretical part, the author defines the concept of securitization, together with securitization process and introduces the units of securitization. The empirical part is followed by a description of the Belarusian regime and a summary of the factual context of the topic, which will provide the reader with a basic orientation of the case study. Based on the events that took place in Belarus between the year 2020 and 2022, a discursive analysis of selected documents of the Council of the European Union and speeches by Ursula von der Leyen and Josep Borrell illustrates whether there had been efforts to securitize the topic. The analysis then focuses on evaluating the audience's acceptance of the threat of the Belarusian regime and assessing the extraordinary measures taken in response to the events in Belarus. In the final part of the thesis, the author concludes that there had been a successful securitization of the threat of the Belarusian authoritarian regime by the European Union in the years from 2020 to 2022, and therefore all research questions can be answered "yes".