This article makes a case for studying the legitimation of emergency politics from the vantage point of securitisation. To that end, it zooms in on politics during the COVID-19 pandemic – a many-sided crisis that generated a heightened insecurity environment. Based on a qualitative content analysis of the French official rhetoric on two COVID-19 emergency measures, it foregrounds how securitising speech acts construing a macro threat and notable shifts in hierarchical ordering of securitisations underpinned justifications for COVID-19 pandemic politics. Conceptually, this research bridges the literature on legitimation and securitisation by synthesising scattered securitising elements in typologies of legitimation and outlining the legitimating function of two securitisation dynamics – macrosecuritisation and securitising dilemma.