ABSTRACT
This chapter covers collective interests of EU member states and their preferences to support integration multilaterally. The chapter starts by describing how multilateral promotion of regional integration is implemented by the EU through three different instruments of aid, trade and political dialogue. It also shows how these three instruments are used in combination with conditionality in order to pursue other European collective interests. In the second section, the chapter introduces a modified intergovernmentalism theoretical framework that will be used to explain the outcome. The theory section is divided into three parts based on how states make decisions at the EU level, starting from national preference formation to interstate bargaining and, finally, outcome. Different assumptions are developed in each of these stages to explain how European countries may have coordinated development policy at EU level to allow for multilateral promotion of regional integration and have retained the possibility of using other bilateral channels.
