The Inter-Organisational Relations Between the European Union and International Organisations

This paper deals with the inter-organisational relationships between the European Union (EU) as a regional integration organisation and international organisations (IOs). More specifically, the paper deals with the EU’s status in IOs. While previous works and overviews often suffer from a selection bias with a view to EU membership or observer status in IOs, this paper explicitly includes IOs, in which the EU could be a member/observer but does not have such a status. On the basis of two datasets, the Correlates of War (CoW) International Governmental Organization (IGO) Data (v2.3) and the Yearbook of International Organizations, all potentially relevant organisations were selected in a first step. Subsequently, the EU’s status was established through original data collection, so that conclusions on negative cases become possible. With more than 30 cases of full IO membership, 30 cases of the role as observer and 40 cases without any formal status, it is possible to provide a comprehensive picture on EU-IO inter-organisational relations for the first time.