Est modus in rebus? Advancing European Union foreign policy through mediative practices in multilateral negotiations

Because of the EU's manifold nature, which aggregates national and supranational features, multilateral negotiations represent an inherently paradoxical setting for EU action. Such paradoxical context exemplifies the EU's institutional complexity and layering of institutions and policy-making contexts, which create problems of linkage and coordination during and after processes of negotiation. It therefore contributes to the capability-expectations gap, whereby the EU is eager to take on a more ambitious normative role, but often falls short of such aspirations due to the structural constraints posed by its sui generis negotiation system. This raises the question of whether EU behaviour in multilateral negotiations is a result of its structural weakness or is strategically adopted to achieve its foreign policy objectives. Existing scholarship has only tackled such a question by developing a dichotomous discourse over EU performance linking policy goals and outcomes and not analysing what it actually does in negotiations.

The project adopts a mediation-as-foreign-policy approach to understand whether in multilateral negotiations the EU is pushed into a mediative role faute de mieux - because its heterogenous negotiation system poses structural constraints on its foreign policy ambitions - or mediation constitutes a promising foreign policy strategy, i.e. a programmatic approach developed for a specific context that is based on a set of principles, that is coherent with the EU's identity and that can be useful to overcome its structural constraints and push through its foreign policy objectives. This prompts the following problématique: "To what extent is the EU's mediative function integrated within its foreign policy strategy?"

Such project is significant as to move beyond the current discourse linking EU policy goals and outputs in multilateral negotiations as a measure of its effectiveness in fulfilling its function and achieving its foreign policy objectives. Rather, it develops a nuanced and innovative analysis of whether the EU's function in negotiation mirrors its identity in its foreign-policy building. It is also innovative in its approach, as it shifts from a limited perspective of mediation as a tool of peace-making to integrate it into a broader framework of strategic EU action within international multilateral negotiations. Methodologically, the study seeks to develop an innovative framework that translates a theoretical conceptualisation of the EU's mediative identity into a practical study of the foreign policy function of the EU's mediative approach in multilateral negotiations by undertaking practice research.

The planned result is to achieve a broadened understanding of the EU's strategy to exert its material and normative power by creating initiative into mediation in the paradoxical context of multilateral negotiations. If the mediation lens proves effective, it can lead to the formulation of a framework based on praxis that integrates mediation and negotiation theory with EU foreign policy studies. Such framework can strengthen the nexus between theory and practice, guaranteeing an expansion of theory as well as advancement in practice. Therefore, this analysis will enrich the current literature in the field of EU, mediation, and negotiation studies, but it also provides practical benefits to improve EU diplomacy in the field.