The European Union and Global Multilateral Governance – An Interdisciplinary Research Project: Research Notes (Part 1)

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Imagine…a newly appointed Canadian delegate to the United Nations (UN) has been requested at the 62nd UN General Assembly to speak to the European Union (EU) representative about the following agenda items: ‘Implementation of the Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS’, ‘The role of diamonds in fuelling conflict’ and ‘The promotion of new and renewable sources of energy’. Prior to doing so, the Canadian delegate felt it would be best to first sit in on a plenary meeting to see who indeed to approach. Following the plenary the delegate is seemingly perplexed: three different individuals spoke on three different issue areas “on behalf of the EU”. The question that arose in the delegate’s head naturally was “who is the EU and who can I discuss these agenda items with?”

It is against this background that the research project “The EU and Global Multilateral Governance” has been set up. It seeks to tackle not only the crucial question posed by our
imagined “delegate” (‘who is the EU in international affairs?’), but also the questions that surround the EU’s capacities and its actual role performance (‘what can and does the EU do?’) in an ever more complex global political arena.

JCER, Vol.5, No.1, March 2009 Part 2 http://www.jcer.net/ojs/index.php/jcer/issue/view/12

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