Nuclear and Multilateral Disarmament
The risk of nuclear weapons use is rising, not receding. Intensifying geopolitical competition, the erosion of arms control agreements, and growing pressures on the global non-proliferation regime are increasing the likelihood of miscalculation and undermining decades of crucial progress toward disarmament.
Staff Contacts
The ELN’s Nuclear and Multilateral Disarmament Programme works to advance sustainable and irreversible reductions in nuclear and other weapons. It focuses on strengthening the international frameworks, legal instruments, and cooperative arrangements that underpin disarmament and non-proliferation, while addressing the political and technical barriers that continue to impede progress.
Combining the work of leading policy experts and the collective experience of the ELN’s robust cross-national network, the programme develops realistic, actionable policy options and builds support for disarmament across Europe and beyond.
Through focused research, high-level dialogue, and targeted engagement, it works directly with decision-makers to shape policy debates, strengthen key multilateral processes, including the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and drive practical outcomes. By leveraging the ELN’s unique convening power, the programme translates analysis into impact, reinforcing international law, revitalising cooperation, and advancing the urgent conditions needed for meaningful and lasting disarmament.
Programme Publications
Commentary
Network reflections: 2026 NPT Review Conference
The Eleventh NPT Review Conference (RevCon) begins on 27 April 2026 in New York City. Here, members of the ELN’s ‘Protecting the NPT’ project reflect on what they hope to see at this RevCon and offer advice to diplomats entering negotiations.
Event
The European Leadership Network at the 2026 NPT Review Conference
Building on our work throughout the review cycle, join the ELN for two state-sponsored side events at the 2026 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, United Nations, New York.
Commentary
Hans Blix: Can arms control survive this dangerous age of war and rearmament?
Veteran diplomat and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director-General Emeritus Hans Blix warns that a volatile world of renewed great-power conflict and accelerating rearmament is eroding the foundations of arms control. While nuclear deterrence still restrains escalation, diplomatic failure, proliferation risks, and waning trust in global agreements raise urgent questions about whether meaningful disarmament, and lasting peace, remain politically achievable.
Related Content
Commentary
Why the NPT and TPNW must work together to prevent nuclear insecurity
At a time of heightened nuclear risk, the credibility of the non-proliferation regime increasingly depends not on treating the NPT and TPNW as rival models, but on finding ways for them to function in a mutually reinforcing way. As Simabatu Mayele Sims Nono writes, reshaping the NPT-TPNW relationship can turn it from a source of fragmentation into a lever for stabilisation.
Commentary
ELN reflections: 2026 NPT Review Conference
Amid mounting geopolitical tensions and deepening scepticism about multilateral diplomacy, diplomats, experts, and civil society representatives are gathering in New York for the 2026 NPT Review Conference to confront growing divisions over disarmament and non-proliferation. In these reflections, ELN staff who attended the RevCon examine the mounting risks facing the global nuclear order, and consider what they reveal about the future of the NPT regime.
Commentary
Reflections on the JCPOA: why it worked and why it matters now
On the anniversary of President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, former European Commission Vice-President Catherine Ashton reflects on the diplomacy behind the landmark JCPOA agreement, why it worked, and what its collapse means today. Ashton argues that collective leadership and renewed European engagement remain essential to securing long-term regional stability.