Purpose – examine the European Union (EU) integrated political crisis response system, within the scope of the EU common security and defence policy and the present value of negotiations as a tool.

Research methodology – a systematic analysis of the scientific literature and descriptive methods were applied to analyse actual and recent theoretical scientific work on integrating the European Union security and defence policy. We were discussing the concept of security from the theoretical perspective of constructivism, presenting the essential features. The empirical part of the work proves how discourse theory may help develop both negotiations and constructivism methodology.

Findings – Negotiation theory play an important role in crisis management, developed proposals for the theory and methodology of negotiations.

Research limitations – research does not cover negotiations in the context of military actions; the research examines the only civil empirical case of COVID-19 crises.

Practical implications – presented conclusions show how the development of negotiations theory may substantially increase responsiveness to any EU crisis.

Originality/Value – this study as interdisciplinary combined mixed methodologies: constructivism methodology of threat identification was compared with discourse theory (Austin’s) speech act.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3846/cibmee.2021.631