This volume seeks to explore the complex relationship between the European Union and International Organizations, and to fill a remarkably wide gap in existing literature on the topic. Analysing the way in which the EU engages in some of the most important international organizations, this book outlines a framework for analysis within this thriving subject of study. By demonstrating how the EU supports ‘effective multilateralism’ and global governance, as well as furthering developments within foreign policy, this volume adopts a novel perspective on the EU as an international player. Seeking to move the focus of study beyond the European Union as itself an international organization, contributors set out to demonstrate EU aspirations to act within international organizations. The volume’s key features include: the first comprehensive study on this topic eight case studies of the EU, including its role within the UN, WTO, NATO, and the ICC contributions from both internationally renowned political scientists and economists The European Union and International Organizations will be of vital interest to students and scholars of international relations, European Politics, Political Science, and International Organisations. It will also be of interest to a wider readership including policy makers, diplomats, and journalists.

In December 2011, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the International Law Commission's articles on the responsibility of international organizations, bringing to conclusion not only nearly ten years of reflection by the Commission, governments and organizations on this specific topic, but also decades of study of the wider subject of international responsibility, which had initially focused on State responsibility. Parallel to this reflection by the Commission, diplomats and public officials, the body of international case-law and literature on the many facets of the topic has steadily been growing. Responsibility of International Organizations: Essays in Memory of Sir Ian Brownlie contributes to the body of international literature by collecting a broad spectrum of different and sometimes differing perspectives from well-known experts in the field, ranging from the bench to the Commission, academia, and the world of in-house counsel. The book is also a memorial to the renowned Sir Ian Brownlie, himself a former Chairman of the International Law Commission who, as a leading scholar and practitioner, greatly contributed to the reflection on international responsibility, including the responsibility of international organizations. Edited by Maurizio Ragazzi, a former pupil of Sir Ian, the book is an ideal companion to International Responsibility Today, a collection of essays on international responsibility which the same editor presented in 2005 in memory of Oscar Schachter, and to which Sir Ian Brownlie had contributed. The essays collected in Responsibility of International Organizations: Essays in Memory of Sir Ian Brownlie, conveniently grouped by the editor under broad areas for the reader's benefit, will be relevant not only to all those interested in this specific subject but also, more generally, to all those engaged in the field of international law and the law of international organizations.

The European Union is a key participant in international organisations with its involvement taking different forms, ranging from full membership to mere observer. Moreover, there is also not only one status of observer, but different ones depending on the constituent charters of the organisations. This book provides a comprehensive overview of the participation of the EU in five international organisations: the UN, the ILO, the WTO, the WHO and the WIPO. It identifies its role and influence in diverse areas of global governance, such as foreign policy, peace, human rights, social rights, trade, health and intellectual property. EU and international experts, diplomats and scholars have contributed to this book to give an overview of the different aspects linked to the participation of the EU in these organisations and to the coordination that takes place internally with its Member States. They also examine the EU's actual influence in the various areas and its contribution to global governance. The combination of these two dimensions allows the work to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the participation of the EU in these five international organisations. The book provides valuable insights for scholars, policymakers and is useful for representatives of other international organisations and civil society actors.

Over the years, the European Union has developed relationships with other international institutions, mainly as a result of its increasingly active role as a global actor and the transfer of competences from the Member States to the EU. This book presents a comprehensive and critical assessment of the EU’s engagement with other international institutions, examining both the EU’s representation and cooperation as well as the influence of these bodies on the development of EU law and policy.

This study provides a comprehensive discussion of all aspects of the European Union presence in International Organisations (IOs). The editors seek to explore both the political and institutional implications of the EU’s interaction with IOs and the effect of the EU’s presence on the functioning of the respective IOs. The result of an international workshop with an outstanding line up of experts, the book discusses a range of issues, including: The Impact of the EU security contributions to IO’s such as the OSCE, NATO and the UN, and the EU’s role in decision making. The role of EU – US relations in the development of major International Organisations Participation in the Doha Development agenda and the EU’s relationship with the WTO The issues of leadership and coherence within and outside the EU The growing international relationship with the African Union and the more troubled supporting role of the Commonwealth. Approaching the EU's international interactions from different theoretical and analytical angles, this work clearly discusses the broad spectrum of issues that surround the evolution and future of the European Union in an international context

The Performance of the EU in International Institutions marks one of the first attempts to systematically analyse the subject. It focuses on the role of the EU in decision-making within international organizations and regimes as a major locus of global governance. The book unpacks the concept of EU performance into four core elements: effectiveness (goal achievement); efficiency (ratio between outputs accomplished and costs incurred); relevance (of the EU for its priority stakeholders); and financial/resource viability (the ability of the performing organization to raise the funds required). Based on the case studies herein, the findings presented in this book relate to the identified core elements of performance with a particular emphasis on the dimensions of 'effectiveness' and 'relevance'. Most notably, the EU appears, on balance and over the past two decades, to have become much more relevant for its member states when acting within international institutions. The book highlights four particular factors explaining EU performance in international institutions: the status of relevant EU legislation and policies, the legal framework conditions including the relevant changes that the Lisbon Treaty has brought about, domestic EU politics, and the international context. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of European Integration

Based on papers originally presented at a symposium held Apr. 5-7, 2001.

The European Union is the world’s most advanced international organization, presiding over a level of legal and economic integration unmatched in global politics. To explain this achievement, many observers point to its formal rules that entail strong obligations and delegate substantial power to supranational actors such as the European Commission. This legalistic view, Mareike Kleine contends, is misleading. More often than not, governments and bureaucrats informally depart from the formal rules and thereby contradict their very purpose. Behind the EU’s front of formal rules lies a thick network of informal governance practices. If not the EU’s rules, what accounts for the high level of economic integration among its members? How does the EU really work? In answering these questions, Kleine proposes a new way of thinking about international organizations. Informal governance affords governments the flexibility to resolve conflicts that adherence to EU rules may generate at the domestic level. By dispersing the costs that integration may impose on individual groups, it allows governments to keep domestic interests aligned in favor of European integration. The combination of formal rules and informal governance therefore sustains a level of cooperation that neither regime alone permits, and it reduces the EU’s democratic deficit by including those interests into deliberations that are most immediately affected by its decisions. In illustrating informal norms and testing how they work, Kleine provides the first systematic analysis, based on new material from national and European archives and other primary data, of the parallel development of the formal rules and informal norms that have governed the EU from the 1958 Treaty of Rome until today.

Since its creation, the European Union (EU) has been a participant in the activities of other International Organisations (IOs) or has been working together with them. Still, little information is available on what this long-term involvement with(in) IOs means for International Relations and European Studies. Why has the EU been involved with(in) IOs on such a long-term basis? How? With what impact? These three key research questions are addressed in this innovative volume, in a bid to explore the continuity of EU action with(in) IOs. While written by a diversity of authors (from European Studies or from International Relations, Europeans or non-Europeans) and from a diversity of disciplines (in particular Law and Political Science), each chapter of the volume elaborates on three common political concepts derived from three-fold questioning: commitment (for the why question), consistency (for the how question), and effects (for the question of impact). Consisting of a two part structure, the book is focussed in Part I on more general trends of the EU’s long-term participation with(in) IOs - with contributions by A. Wetzel, P. Debaere, F. De Ville, J. Orbie, B. Saenen and J. Verschaeve, and P. Nedergaard and M. D. Jensen - and in Part II on more precise case studies on labour standards, public services, flexicurity, human trafficking and security - with contributions by R. Kissack, A. Crespy, E. Xiarchogiannopoulou and D. Tsarouhas, B. Simmons and A. DiSilvestro, and N. Græger. Highly useful for students, academics and experts, this volume combines a clear and easy-to-use framework with new empirical data.

Including several contributions from an international group of historians and experts of international relations, this book analyses the relationship between the United Nations and European integration. The book, which covers from 1945 to the present, is organised into three sections, each dedicated to a different phase of the integration process, during which EU-UN relations had a different character. The essays of the first section deal with the 1950s and 1960s and show the active part played by UN bodies in shaping the integration process. In the second part, covering the 1970s and 1980s, it is the European Community which is shown to have had a visible impact on the life and the decision-making process of several UN bodies. Finally, the third part of the book, on the post-Cold War years, describes a more complex situation, characterised by new geopolitical responsibilities of the European Union, but also by its deep internal transformations due to several treaty revisions and the enlargement to Eastern Europe. Thus, dynamics similar to those described in the first section return, with UN bodies shaping some of the internal rules of the EU, but these coexist with strengthened European activity in the United Nations, in some cases leading to real partnerships.