Informal Governance in European Foreign Policy

Informal governance in European foreign policy encompasses the array of non-institutional coordination mechanisms that member states, EU institutions and external actors employ alongside or outside the formal Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). These practices—ranging from ad hoc coalitions and small “lead groups” to transnational networks of officials and private stakeholders—address the inherent rigidity of unanimity-based decision-making. By drawing on personal contacts, back-channel diplomacy and solution-driven exchanges, informal arrangements accelerate crisis response, foster policy experimentation and diffuse best practices across national administrations. At the same time, they must navigate questions of legitimacy, transparency and coherence with EU values. Over the past decade, scholarship has traced how such unwritten architectures have shaped European engagement on migration, sanctions, nuclear negotiations and security assistance, demonstrating both their capacity to generate swift consensus and their potential to engender fragmentation when divergent agendas prevail.

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Informal Governance in European Foreign Policy publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in informal governance in european foreign policy across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Informal governance: Non-codified coordination practices among states, institutions and non-state actors that supplement or bypass formal policy frameworks.

Lead group: A small coalition of member states that takes initiative on a specific foreign policy issue, often steering broader EU action.

Directoire: An informal executive circle within a larger ensemble (often three states) that guides negotiations or crisis management efforts.

Differentiated cooperation: The practice whereby subsets of EU member states pursue joint foreign or security policy objectives outside full EU institutional procedures.

References

1. How do private companies shape responses to migration in Europe? Informality, organizational decisions, and transnational change. Regulation & Governance (2023).
2. Differentiated Cooperation in the EU’s Foreign and Security Policy: Effectiveness, Accountability, Legitimacy. The International Spectator (2022).
3. Legitimation strategies of informal groups of states: The case of the E3 directoire in the nuclear negotiations with Iran. Cooperation and Conflict (2020).
4. Lead Groups in EU Foreign Policy: The Cases of Iran and Ukraine. European Review of International Studies (2021).
5. Organizing European security through informal groups: insights from the European Union’s response to the Russian war in Ukraine. International Politics (2025).