Navigating from Conflict to Working Arrangement: EU Coordination in the International Maritime Organization

National officials from EU member states who participate in negotiations in other international organizations (IOs) are often obliged to coordinate on the basis of proposals from the European Commission. As many IOs represent an intergovernmental order and the Commission can be seen as an executive centre in development within an executive European order with supranational traits, the EU and other IOs may be institutionally mismatched and conflicts between EU member states and the Commission over coordination may ensue. In this paper EU coordination in the International Maritime Organization is examined to see how this mismatch is resolved. In the IMO the institutional mismatch seems to have been overcome through a learning process necessitated by pre-existing institutional configurations in which an important entrepreneur – the Commission’s Permanent Representative – has framed the process as more intergovernmental to secure EU coordination.

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