The European Union and the crisis of multilateralism in an era of uncertainty and power politics

The European Union (EU) has a rich policy portfolio towards and within many formal international governmental organisations (FIGOs). For decades, the EU has officially promoted ‘effective multilateralism’. However, the main argument of the article is that the EU’s relations with many members of FIGOs are bound to be conflictual. We unpack the argument in three steps. First, we address a fundamental issue, specifically the general characteristics of relations between democratic and non-democratic states. According to Michael W. Doyle’s version of the democratic peace theory, such relations are bound to be conflictual, not least due to democratic states being war prone. Second, given that the EU in principle is a community of democracies, the feature of conflictual relations is highly relevant for our understanding of the EU’s responses to the current crisis of multilateralism. Hence, we examine the degree to which the EU is ready to accommodate non-liberal values and principles or, alternatively, entrench and protect said values and principles. Third, with a view to the EU’s future policies towards and within FIGOs, we examine the prospects of so-called post-hegemonic multilateralism, arguing that not all cooperative practices qualify as multilateral. This raises intriguing questions about both the EU’s sponsorship of multilateralism.