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Paper - The Accidental Player : The EU and the World Economy

The EU is well represented in international economic and financial organisations such as the G7 or the IMF - in fact, it is overrepresented. But does it really use this formal power to contribute addressing world economic problems ? In this paper, I discuss the reasons for that situation and claim that the combination of an overweighted institutional representation and a much less prominent role in substantive discussions is unsustainable.

The EU has an occasion to trade off formal, but partially ineffective power for a formally diminished, but more effective influence in world economic affairs. For this to happen, it needs to seize the opportunity of the calls for a rebalancing of representations in the IMF and other institutions and grouping and reform its own external representation.