The Eu's Role in Global Governance — The Legal Dimension

For years the European Union has been looked on as a potential model for cosmopolitan governance, and enjoyed considerable influence on the global stage. The EU has a uniquely strong and legally binding mission statement to pursue international relations on a multilateral basis, founded on the progressive development of international law. The political vision was for the EU to export its values of the rule of law and sophisticated governance mechanisms to the international sphere.

Globalization and the financial crisis have starkly illustrated the limits of this vision, and the EU's dependence on global forces partially beyond the control of traditional provinces of law. This book takes stock of the EU's role in global governance. It asks: to what extent can and does the EU shape and influence the on-going re-ordering of legal processes, principles, and institutions of global governance, in line with its optimistic mission statement?
With this ambitious remit it covers the legal-institutional and substantive aspects of global security, trade, environmental, financial, and social governance. Across these topics 23 contributors have taken the central question of the extent of the EU's influence on global governance, providing a broad view across the key areas as well as a detailed analysis of each. Through comparison and direct engagement with each other, the different chapters provide a distinctive contribution to legal scholarship on global governance, from a European perspective.

Dr. Bart Van Vooren is Assistant Professor of EU Law at the University of Copenhagen, and associate fellow at the Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies. He graduated from New York University School of Law and subsequently received his doctoral degree from the European University Institute. He has published one monograph EU External Relations Law and the European Neighbourhood Policy: A Paradigm for Coherance (Routledge, 2011), and has also published several articles in the field of EU external relations law in journals such as the Common Market Law Review, European Law Review, and the European Foreign Affairs Review.

Prof. Dr. Steven Blockmans is Senior Research Fellow and Head of Unit EU Foreign Policy at the Centre for European Policy Studies, Professor of EU External Relations Law and Governance at the University of Amsterdam, and member of the governing board of the Centre for the Law of EU External Relations. He has published extensively on issues pertaining to the role and position of the EU in the world.

Prof. Dr. Jan Wouters (LLM Yale) is Professor of International Law and International Organizations, Jean Monnet Chair of EU and Global Governance, and Director of the Institute for International Law and the Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies at the University of Leuven, an institute recognized as Centre of Excellence which furthers interdisciplinary research on the EU and global governance. He is Visiting Professor at the College of Europe (Bruges), at the University of Barcelona, and in the European Master's in Human Rights and Democratisation (EMA, Venice). He is Member of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Sciences and Arts, has been referendaire at the European Court of Justice and practises law as Of Counsel at Linklaters, Brussels. He is Editor of the International Encyclopedia of Intergovernmental Organizations and Vice-Director of Revue belge de droit international. He has published widely on the EU, international law, and international organizations.