Resilience and solidarity in European Commission communication on the war in Ukraine: instruments, territories and integration signals

This article examines how the European Commission used four policy registers — resilience, solidarity, unity, and security — in relation to concrete instruments with territorial scope in its communication on Ukraine between March 2022 and June 2025. The study relies on 125 press releases and combines lexicometric analysis with qualitative coding. The results show that resilience was repeatedly associated with instruments such as the Ukraine Facility, macro-financial assistance, guarantees, REPowerEU energy measures, and the modernised DCFTA, with implications for municipalities, corridors, border regions, and infrastructure nodes. Solidarity and unity operated as signals of collective commitment and institutional proximity, while also being linked to obligations for specific places and levels of government. The discourse shifted from crisis containment to a more programmatic script with territorial anchors and a sequence running from fiscal protection to network reinforcement and market integration. Strengthening associations between “Ukraine” and belonging markers are interpreted as evidence that Commission communication helped frame integration as a gradual, policy-embedded process ahead of formal enlargement decisions. The article contributes a policy-relevant account of how official EU communication links registers, instruments, and territorial referents in the context of war, recovery, and integration.