When Multilateralism Hits Brussels: Generalizations and an Agenda for Further Research

The contributions to this volume suggest that the influence of international institutions on the EU can be significant. It has been demonstrated that international institutions shape EU policies, sometimes strongly. Similarly, they can act as a source of preferences and strategies for EU stances in international fora. International institutions can also influence policy-making processes by triggering the emergence of new actors and coalitions or differentially empowering some of them. The reinforcement of the Commission or the facilitation of agreements among member states can even foster small-scale processes of EU integration. Importantly, sometimes these effects are unintended or even undesired by the states that created the international institution in the first place, which shows that top-down processes are at least occasionally independent from previous bottom-up ones. In other words, the studies in this volume suggest that international institutions constitute the EU, and not only the other way around.