During the period 2014-2017, the European Foreign Policy Observatory continued its analytical work in the field of EU as an international actor. During this period the group focused on analyzing the way in which the transition of power in the international system is changing the role of the EU inside international institutions. The group assessed the extent to which the defense of multilateralism is still compatible with the defense of EU values, norms and policies in view of the growing importance of the emerging powers in the multilateral system. Moreover, the group examined how the EU acts when these dual defenses are incompatible. The conceptualization of the tension between these two main objectives (multilateralism, values) of European foreign policy represents an original contribution to the literature on the role of EU as an international actor. The group constructed its analytical framework based on empircial work drawn from sectoral cases (e.g. trade, energy, climate change, non-proliferation, conflict management, child labor, gender equality, International Monetary Fund, transnational crime). This enabled the group to verify the EU’s loss of influence and the process or processes that explain such a loss in each empirical case scenario. See group contributions to Journal of World Trade (2014), Journal of Language and Politics (2015), Journal of European Public Policy (2015) (2016), Mediterranean Politics (2015), and two books, published in Palgrave (2016) and Tecnos (2014), among others.

As regards to doctoral training, the group produced several PhD theses throughout this period: Martijn Vlaskamp, “The European Union and its Policies to Curtail the Trade in Natural Resources that fund Armed Conflicts” (2014); Raül Hernández Sagrera, “The European Union and Eastern Europe Migration Policy Convergence beyond Europeanisation: The Cases of Russia, Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia” (2015); Federica Zarco, “Whose Ownership? Explaining the Effects of Increasing Institutionalisation of the Euro-Mediterranean Architecture on EU-Tunisia Cooperation” (2015); Fabio Sánchez, “UNASUR: Poder y multilateralismo en Suramérica en el siglo XXI”; Irina Khayrizamanova, “The (mis-) recognition of the European Union as an International Actor: The Discourse-historical Analysis of the Russian Political Narrative” (2016); Melissa Salmerón, “Observación electoral internacional y promoción de la democracia: Una aproximación a las relaciones de la Unión Europea con los países del Mediterráneo” (2017). The pre-doctoral fellow Jordi Mas joined the group in year 2014.