This article investigates the conditions under which the European Union (EU) is able to transfer its rules via global governance institutions. Building upon the European governance and Europeanisation literatures, the article hypothesises that the multilateral transfer of EU rules is successful when the EU is in a position to mobilise sectoral power asymmetries or when the EU seeks the actual consent of rule importers, which it can do when the EU rule is endowed with certain properties (problem-solving and/or legitimacy) and/or when the rule transfer process is designed so as to legitimise the EU rule. The article then moves on to testing these hypotheses on the basis of four plausibility probes dedicated to the global transfer of EU rules via United Nations specialised agencies.
