[Early career workshop] EU external relations law: reviving multilateralism - what role for the EU?

The T.M.C. Asser Instituut, the Centre for the Law of EU External Relations (CLEER), Utrecht University, and the University of Groningen are pleased to announce a two-day workshop for PhD and early-career scholars on the theme of the legal dimensions of the EU’s role in reviving multilateralism.

The rules-based international order appears to be crumbling, marked by fragmentation in both trade and defense. The US-China trade war and the imposition by the US administration of "reciprocal" tariffs on allies and adversaries alike have disrupted global trade. In defense, the US commitment to NATO has waned, prompting Europe to rearm, and putting strain on existing multilateral institutions, including the UN. A shift from multilateral solutions is also evident in the European Union's adoption of unilateral trade instruments to defend its interests in an international trading system where the WTO appellate body no longer functions, and trade policy increasingly serves national security interests.

This situation poses a significant challenge to the EU, an international organisation of 27 sovereign states, whose founding treaties require it to ‘promote multilateral solutions to common problems, particularly in the framework of the United Nations’. In a world with fewer like-minded partners, can the EU play a role in reviving or reconstructing multilateralism without US leadership? Can the EU’s embrace of a ‘strategic autonomy’ agenda be reconciled with a principled commitment to multilateralism? Could the EU's bilateral and plurilateral agenda lay the foundations for a new multilateral system, potentially with a diminished US role? What would the EU's role be in such a system, and how can it ensure alignment with its founding values of rule of law and democracy? Likewise, how can the EU avoid centralised, executive-led decision-making that sidelines courts and parliaments while constructing this new order?

The workshop is now calling for abstract submissions. Send your abstract and short CV to e.kassoti@asser.nl.