Explaining the EU's perfermance in NATO: EU-NATO relations and challenges facing the EU as a security actor

How does the EU perform – what role, significance and influence does the EU have– in international institutions? The project is based on a variety of studies of EU performance. NUPI’s research activities in the project are focusing on the EU's role as a security actor in and vis-à-vis NATO, as well as on the EU–NATO relationship in general.

Main aims of the EUPERFORM Project (2010–2014) are to:

• acquire increased scholarly insight into the EU’s role as a global actor
• identify central factors influencing the EU’s role and performance in international institutions
• find factors that can explain the varying influence of the EU in various institutions
• generate comprehensive and comparative data on the EU’s role in international institutions
• strengthen the research environment – internationally and in Norway – and create a network of researchers committed to the study of the EU’s role in international institutions.

NUPI's part of the European Collaborative Research Project titled: EUPERFORM - Assessing
 the EU's peformance in NATO: EU-NATO relations and challenges facing the EU as a security actor
 .

Partners in the project are University of Aarhus (Institute of Political Science), which is also in charge of the project management, Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internacionals (IBEI) and NUPI (Department of International Politics), while University of Bologna-Sede di Forlì (the Faculty of Political Sciences 'R.Ruffilli') is associated partner. Other affiliated partners are Vrije Universiteit Brussel (The Institute for European Studies ) and The University of Twente (The Centre for European Studies) in the Netherlands.

Activities 2013

• February: Nina Græger was discussant on a paper by Jolyon Howorth (Yale University) at a GR:EEN roundtable on "The European Union’s External Action. International Security Challenges and Crisis Response?" in the AGORA Forum in Brüssel 27-28 February.

• April: EUPERFORM organised a panel at The International Studies Association in San Francisco
  3-6 April 2013, titled “The theory and practice of International Organizations: Order, multilateralism, performance and practice across cases”. Participants were:
  Knud Erik Jorgensen: Theorizing EU performance in multilateral institutions: The added value of the English School; Nina Græger: The everyday life of EU-NATO relations: The added value of practice theory; Jamal Shahin and Lisanne Groen: EU performance in multilateral institutions: A conceptual framework; Edith Drieskens: Effective multilateralism: The first decade; Joachim Koops: Theorizing the European Union as an Inter-organizational Actor: Processes, Power and Impact; Pernille Rieker: The EU as a soft power and its performance vis-à-vis NATO. Jonas Tallberg was Chair and Discussants were Michael Bauer and David Galbreath.

Activities 2012

• June: workshop in Barcelona, ​​organized by IBEI, Spanish partner in EUPERFORM. Nina Græger presented the paper "Assessing EU performance in international institutions through practice: the EU-NATO relationship", 8-9 June.

• June: workshop in Brussels at the Institute of European Studies, Uniersité Libre de Bruxelles. Nina Græger presented the paper "The everyday life of EU-NATO relations: The added value of practice theory in the study of inter-organisational Relations", 18-19 June.

• September: Round Table on "The EU and International Institution: Specific Cases of Inter-institutional interaction" on ECPR-SGEU (Standing Group on the European Union) in Tampere, Finland. Nina Græger attended, 13-15 September.