Report of the international conference “The EU, the US and the reform of the United Nations: challenges and perspectives”

The 2005 World Summit was announced as a “once-in-a-generation” opportunity to reform the United Nations so as to provide it with the institutional and policy tools needed to meet the challenges and threats to peace and security in contemporary world. But the Summit was also meant to be a crucial test for the EU common foreign policy and for the state of transatlantic relations. As a matter of fact the success of any UN Reform could be hardly envisaged without the capacity of EU Member States to advance common and consensus-gathering positions and without bridging the gap between US and EU strategic visions on multilateralism and global governance. In order to discuss whether in New York an historic occasion has been seized or rather lost, a group of distinguished scholars and high level diplomats was convened in Florence at the joint invitation of IAI, EUI and UNICRI in the aftermath of the World Summit. This Working Paper reports the debate held at the international confere...