Multilateralism, the UN and the EU

This essay discusses current sticking-points in the development of multilateralism at the global, UN, and regional, EU, levels. In particular it attempts to explain those sticking points, to locate any similarities between them at the two levels, and how they affected each other. The usual assumption in writing about multilateralism is that it has become denser, in the sense that it appears in an increasing number of policy sectors, and that it has become entrenched, in that the norms and principles which sustain it, are more widely and more strongly, supported. But this has not been a process of steadily increasing multilateralism, but rather, as will be shown, one of periods of advance and periods of difficulty. The current difficulties are seen in what follows as sticking-points.