ABSTRACT
The EU and Russia participate in different multilateral fora. There is, however, a significant research gap, as only a few studies have analysed the EU–Russia relationship in the multilateral context and gone beyond EU–Russia interaction in their common ‘neighbourhoods’. The goal of this contribution is to address this gap and to study how the EU and Russia understand multilateralism and how they act in multilateral fora, such as the United Nations Security Council, multilateral arms control and environmental agreements, as well as the formal groupings of the G7/G8 and G20. The EU and Russia have many opportunities to cooperate and have constructively engaged on different global issues and in different multilateral fora. Nonetheless, cooperation has been hindered by different understandings of multilateralism, by different policies of multilateralism(s), by international competition and contestation processes, by internal challenges in the EU and by recent changes in Russian foreign and domestic policy. The theoretical frameworks and methods used by scholars to address these issues as well as possible future avenues of research are briefly discussed. A closer analysis of the EU–Russian global interaction is relevant and can help to generate new ideas on issues where new stimuli and ideas are urgently needed.
