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This thesis investigates the factors driving the European Union (EU) member states tosupport the creation of RescEU, a supranational civil protection reserve. Despite historical resistance to centralizing civil protection at the EU level, RescEU emerged in 2019 as a fully EU-funded reserve. Through a codebook thematic analysis applying secure community theory (SC) and liberal intergovernmentalism (LI), this research examines the roles of trust and states’ preferences in facilitating the creation of RescEU while evaluating the explanatory powers of the two theories. Semi-structured interviews with civil protection officials from Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Sweden form the material for the analysis. The findings indicate that while economic cost-benefit analyses and previous experiences with transboundary crises played significant roles in member states’ decisions, the integration cannot be fully explained through LI’s framework of rational state behavior alone. Trust, which consists of strategic trust and moralistic trust, are key components of SC and emerged as drivers, particularly in facilitating the spillover effects necessary to create RescEU. The study concludes that a combined application of SC and LI provides a more comprehensive understanding of RescEU’s establishment, as SC captures the importance of trust in driving integration in sovereignty-sensitive areas. This thesis helps build upon integration studies bydemonstrating the importance of including trust in the integrationist framework.