Regional international organisations (RIOs) are exponentially growing and play an active role in a wide range of global governance fields, from economic governance to security to the shaping of cultural identities. 

These organisations are heterogeneous in terms of their powers, the degree of institutionalisation, aims, and how they structure their relations with the outside world. As entities that lie at the intermediate level between States and international organisations (IOs), RIOs pose a wide array of questions for international (institutional) law.

Lack of regional perspective

The European Union (EU) is a RIO of particular significance, yet the ‘regional’ perspective is often absent in debates about the EU’s identity and external presence. This conference aims to fill in that gap by exploring how at the EU level the ‘region’ is conceptualised to solve problems in different policy areas from higher education, climate change to the adoption of sanctions. 

Jan Klabbers

The conference will kick off with a keynote address by Prof. Jan Klabbers (Helsinki University) on ‘The Phenomenology of the RIO’. The topic will be explored in three panels: the first, shedding light on the EU as a RIO from a conceptual perspective; the second, from a comparative perspective; and the third, focusing on different case studies from different areas of EU law and policy.  

For more details, see the full conference programme.