Actors and Mechanisms of EU Coordination at the UN

Abstract: This article – the first of two to be published consecutively in the Review – gives precise information about EU negotiations at the UN, articulated around five basic questions – why, where, who, what and how – about EU coordination. The European Union seeks to speak with ‘one voice’ in the United Nations context. The individual EU Member States which make up one seventh of the UN’s total membership could carry immense weight within the UN when they are fully coherent. How the EU manages to reach a common position is a kind of black box. EU statements are public, but the way Member States agree on them is kept hidden behind closed doors. EU coordination deserves to be better understood.