How informality keeps multilateralism going: the role of informal groupings in EU foreign policy negotiations
| Published date | 01 December 2024 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/13540661241269782 |
| Author | Marianna Lovato |
| Date | 01 December 2024 |
E
JR
I
https://doi.org/10.1177/13540661241269782
European Journal of
International Relations
2024, Vol. 30(4) 972 –996
© The Author(s) 2024
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DOI: 10.1177/13540661241269782
journals.sagepub.com/home/ejt
How informality keeps
multilateralism going: the role
of informal groupings in EU
foreign policy negotiations
Marianna Lovato
Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium
Abstract
Informal groupings of states – either as stand-alone entities or as part of formal
international organizations (IOs) – are playing an increasingly important role in sustaining
multilateralism and global governance. But what is it about the informal nature of
these groupings that makes them such a critical and increasingly popular fixture of
international cooperation? To answer this question, the paper focuses on the role of
informal groupings in European Union (EU) foreign policy negotiations. Within the EU,
informal groupings provide a key venue for coordination, information-sharing, learning
and consensus-building. As a result, these groupings are critical for the functioning of the
formal decision-making process, providing necessary building blocks for the success of
multilateral diplomacy. The proposed argument is explored in the case of two distinct
instances of informal groupings, one extra- and one intra-EU grouping, by means of
document analysis and elite interviews with national diplomats. First, the paper examines
the role of the G7 contact group in the formulation of the Russian sanctions back in
2014. Second, it assesses the role of the PESCO 4 in driving the establishment of the
Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO). In both instances, informal groupings
provided important venues for coordination, as well as information-sharing, learning and
consensus-building, which, in turn, enable and sustain multilateral negotiations among 27
member states. Critically engaging with the role of informal groupings in formal IOs, the
paper sheds light on the dynamic relationship between informality and minilateralism, on
the one hand, and formal multilateral institutions, on the other.
Keywords
Informality, international organizations, European Union, minilateralism, multilateralism,
foreign policy
Corresponding author:
Marianna Lovato, Centre for Security, Diplomacy and Strategy, Brussels School of Governance, Vrije
Universiteit Brussel, Boulevard de la Pleine, 1050, Brussel, Belgium.
Email: marianna.lovato@vub.be
1269782EJT0010.1177/13540661241269782European Journal of International Relations X(X)Lovato
research-article2024
Original Article
Lovato 973
Introduction
When Russia illegally annexed Crimea in February–March 2014, allies on both sides of
the Atlantic were famously slow to form a united front (MacFarlane and Menon, 2014;
Schult et al., 2014). Both the then European Union (EU)-28 and the Obama White House
came to an impasse. In Europe, ministers of foreign affairs could not find an agreement
on the best way forward, and in Washington D.C., the National Security Council debated
whether the US even had stakes in the game in Ukraine. As it turns out, an informal solu-
tion provided the way out of this standstill. The American negotiators suggested that an
informal contact group on sanctions be set up among members of the G7 Plus. The group
would offer a confidential space for states to sound out each other’s positions and test
possible compromise solutions without necessarily committing to anything. What started
as an informal, low-stakes venue soon turned out to be an instrumental channel towards
a consensus within the G7, which, in turn, allowed for a compromise between the EU-28
themselves.
Three years later, in the early months of 2017, EU member states were embarking
upon the daunting task of activating the Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO)
provision. Included in the 2009 Lisbon Treaty, PESCO would allow any able and will-
ing member state to set up a defence cooperation framework to pool resources and
strengthen their defence capabilities. Previous attempts to activate the provision, how-
ever, had been unsuccessful. Even in 2017, negotiations appeared complicated, not least
because of strong disagreements between France and Germany, as well as concerns
from Atlanticist capitals. Once again, however, an informal grouping is what ultimately
led member states out of the quagmire. The group – known as the PESCO 4 and made
up by France, Germany, Italy and Spain – worked out an initial proposal and then
actively campaigned to bring as many other EU capitals on board as possible, forging a
successful compromise. These are but two examples of the critical role that informal
groupings as a consensus-building tool can play, in the EU as much as in any other
international organization (IO). This paper contends that it is precisely by focusing on
the informal nature of these groups that we can appreciate their added value to formal,
multilateral negotiations.
Informal groupings are a fundamental part of the day-to-day work of several IOs,
including the United Nations (UN; Prantl, 2005), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO; Pouliot, 2016) and, indeed, the EU (see, e.g. Aggestam and Bicchi, 2019;
Delreux and Keukeleire, 2017; Gegout, 2002). More generally, global governance has
progressively moved away from (solely) multilateral coordination fora and has come to
embrace minilateralism (Brummer, 2014; Falkner, 2016; Kahler, 1993; Moret, 2016;
Tow, 2019) and ad hoc coalitions (Reykers et al., 2023). Against this backdrop, the study
of informal groupings of states, both as part of formal IOs and as stand-alone forms of
cooperation, has become a key prerequisite for a comprehensive understanding of
European and global governance. The existing literature readily recognizes the informal
nature of these groupings, as well as their added value to the decision-making process
(e.g. Delreux and Keukeleire, 2017; Pouliot, 2016; Prantl, 2005; Tow, 2019). However,
not enough attention has been paid to exactly how informal groupings work and help
reach consensus in formal IOs.
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