The European Union’s traditional negotiation model is facing unprecedented pressure as global politics become more unstable, polarized and transactional, Filippo Martini said during his plenary presentation at the 9th International Conference on Multidisciplinary Research.
Martini, adjunct professor of negotiation at the University of Ferrara in Italy and Fellow of the Institute for Global Negotiation, presented the study “Mapping the European Negotiation Landscape: Insights from the European Negotiation Conference 2025.” The paper was co-authored with Frederik Nuehnen, Francesco Cruz Torres and Julia Gubler. It examines how geopolitical disruption is reshaping negotiation practice in Europe, drawing from 19 semi-structured expert interviews conducted with practitioners, researchers and educators at the 2025 European Negotiation Conference.
Martini said the paper matters now because the rules-based international order is under pressure from multiple global developments, including Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Israel-Palestine conflict, shifts in American foreign policy and the weakening of multilateral institutions.
He said these conditions have contributed to the rise of more transactional negotiation styles, where collaborative models are increasingly replaced by approaches shaped by polarization, authoritarian tendencies and short-term interests.
“The EU’s traditional negotiation model faces unprecedented testing under these conditions,” Martini’s presentation noted.
Grounded in principled negotiation, nested negotiation, multi-level governance and normative credibility, the study explored how the EU negotiates across institutions, member states, domestic systems and public opinion. Martini explained that the EU’s value-based identity — anchored on human rights, inclusivity, multilateralism, rule-based cooperation and consensus-building — remains one of its strategic strengths.
However, he said this strength can become a weakness when the EU fails to apply its values consistently.
One of the study’s key findings focused on what Martini described as a credibility gap. While the EU proclaims human rights, inclusivity, transparency, rule-based cooperation and multilateralism, actual policy outcomes may reflect migration policy contradictions, selective foreign policy, inconsistent human rights enforcement, crisis-driven compromises and double standards in the application of rules.
The consequence, Martini said, is declining trust, weakened credibility and reduced bargaining power.
“The EU’s normative identity is both a source of power and a source of vulnerability,” the presentation stated. “Inconsistency transforms strength into weakness.”
Martini also discussed institutional complexity as a major challenge in European negotiations. He said EU institutions, member states, domestic actors and civil society all form part of a multi-level negotiation environment. While this structure gives decisions legitimacy, it also makes responses slower, more fragmented and vulnerable to deadlock.
He said the same structures that make EU decisions legitimate can also make them difficult to implement quickly, especially during crises that demand urgent action.
Another major finding was the tension between legitimacy and responsiveness. Martini said crises require fast responses, but inclusive procedures take time. This creates pressure on the EU to become faster without abandoning the procedures that make its decisions legitimate.
He also emphasized the research-practice disconnection in negotiation work. Academic research often develops slowly, while crises move quickly and practitioners have limited time to engage with scholarly work. To address this, he called for stronger knowledge transfer through policy briefs, practitioner workshops, accessible formats, scenario-based training and interactive platforms.
Martini said better negotiation practice requires stronger links between theory, training, political reality and accessible communication. He also distinguished advocacy from negotiation, saying civil society advocates push for goals, while negotiators create dialogue spaces and make disagreement manageable.
In his conclusion, Martini said the EU’s key challenge is to make legitimacy and responsiveness mutually reinforcing rather than mutually limiting. He identified three priorities: aligning normative credibility by applying values consistently across policy areas, improving responsiveness by adapting procedures without abandoning consensus, and strengthening communication through transparency and better research-practice exchange.
The plenary presentation formed part of the 9th ICMR’s international lineup of scholarly discussions, which gathered researchers and academic partners from local and international institutions to examine emerging issues across disciplines.