Enhancing The Brazil Eu Strategic Partnership

The result of a joint project involving European and Brazilian scholars, this book examines ways to enhance the significance of the strategic partnership between the European Union and Brazil. It explores such key topics as - Addressing global macro-financial issues in the wake of the euro crisis - Trade relations - Climate change - Comparative regionalism - Paradigms for foreign policy The book looks at the partnership as a test case of how two players in the new multi-polar context can search for common positions on key issues of global governance. The EU and Brazil have reasonably promising grounds for working together and sharing democratic political values and common cultural roots, but Brazil is also an active member of the BRICS grouping, whose other members (notably China and Russia, but also India and South Africa) often take very different positions. The major world players are now involved in a burgeoning process of extraordinary complexity, at both multilateral and bilateral levels, searching for alliances in the shaping of a new world order. This book, limited to the bilateral EU-Brazil relationship, serves to cast clearer light on the issues.

Master's Thesis from the year 2018 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Topic: European Union, grade: 1,0, University of Cologne (Lehrstuhl für internationale Politik und Außenpolitik), language: English, abstract: At the beginning of the 21st century, the international system is characterised by ever increasing interdependence, forcing actors to re-organise their relations. The new overlapping foreign policy instruments and cooperation formats on a bilateral, (sub)regional, interregional and multilateral level, in which states pursue different strategies for the assertion of interests, result in constellations that can be favourable but are often problematic for the conclusion of free trade agreements (FTAs). The EU, only recently having started to develop a common foreign policy and institutionalising relations with partners on a bilateral, interregional and multilateral level, is not free from this problem. Following an incoherent foreign trade policy, in which it shifts from bilateral (South Africa) to interregional (South East Asia) an mixed strategies (South America), the Union faces challenges in the conclusion of interregional FTAs. A current example is the ongoing bloc-to-bloc trade negotiations with the MERCOSUL (Mercado Comum do Sul in Portuguese or Common Market of the South in English) countries and the recent establishment of a bilateral SP with the MERCOSUL member Brazil that aims at cooperation on several topics, including trade. In the literature, attention has been paid to regionalisation and interregionalism, as well as the duality of the EU’s biregional relations and bilateral SPs creating chances and limits of global policy-making. But although trade has played a prominent role in the study of interregional relations, attempts to link the duality of biregional and bilateral approaches in EU foreign policy with foreign trade policy-making have been modest. This study provides an in-depth analysis of the impact of the EU’s bilateral SP with third states on the Union’s ability to conclude FTAs with economic blocs the SP is integrated with. A single case study, focusing on the coexistence of interregional EU-MERCOSUL FTA negotiations and the bilateral SP between the EU and Brazil, analyses the SP’s value as an EU foreign policy instrument for the enhancement of negotiations on interregional FTAs.

This paper addresses the strategic partnerships that the EU seeks to set up with four important actors, whose ascent is changing traditional patterns of power and governance: Brazil, China, India and Russia. These partnerships, among other instruments, can play a critical role in reconciling multilateral governance and emerging multipolarity.

This book provides a critical and updated analysis of the nature of the EU’s strategic partnership diplomacy, and of the partnerships themselves, in times of power shift and contestation. It links with key aspects of the EU’s Global Strategy; it brings together a strong list of experts who work within a clear framework for analysis; and it deals not only with the substance of the policy but also with the ways in which the policy as a whole has emerged, is conducted and might develop in the future. In offering an inclusive set of case studies and diverse perspectives, this book aims to advance both conceptualization and analysis of the implementation of the established EU partnerships. The book highlights the notion of strategic partnership as a foreign policy instrument to support EU external action in a context of multilevel change and crisis; its policy dimension as a gradually separated, but not separable policy within the Union’s external action; the institutional component given the emergence of SPs as a sort of self-preserving institutional platform allowing for denser and deeper cooperation in various policy areas; and the implications for the EU’s self-conception as an international actor with a global identity and role.

During the last two decades the study of European foreign policy has experienced remarkable growth, presumably reflecting a more significant international role of the European Union. The Union has significantly expanded its policy portfolio and though empty symbolic politics still exists, the Union’s international relations have become more substantial and its foreign policy more focused. European foreign policy has become a dynamic policy area, being adapted to changing challenges and environments, such as the Arab Spring, new emerging economies/powers; the crisis of multilateralism and much more. The SAGE Handbook of European Foreign Policy, Two-Volume set, is a major reference work for Foreign Policy Programmes around the world. The Handbook is designed to be accessible to graduate and postgraduate students in a wide variety of disciplines across the humanities and social sciences. Both volumes are structured to address areas of critical concern to scholars at the cutting edge of all major dimensions of foreign policy. The volumes are composed of original chapters written specifically to the following themes: · Research traditions and historical experience · Theoretical perspectives · EU actors · State actors · Societal actors · The politics of European foreign policy · Bilateral relations · Relations with multilateral institutions · Individual policies · Transnational challenges The Handbook will be an essential reference for both advanced students and scholars.

In a multipolar world with growing demand for energy, not least by Emerging Powers such as Brazil, India, China or South Africa (BICS), questions of EU external energy governance would at first hand appear to be a high-priority. Yet, reality tells a different story: the EU’s geographical focus remains on adjacent countries in the European neighbourhood and on issues related to energy security. Despite being Strategic Partners and engaging in energy dialogues, it seems that the EU is lacking strategic vision and is not perceived as a major actor in energy cooperation with the BICS. Thus, political momentum for energy cooperation and joint governance of scarce resources is vanishing. Resulting from three years of international, interdisciplinary research cooperation among academics and practitioners in Europe and the BICS countries within a project funded by the Volkswagen Foundation, this volume addresses one of the greatest global challenges. Specific focus lies on the bilateral energy dialogues and Strategic Partnerships between the EU and Emerging Powers regarding bilateral, inter- and transnational energy cooperation. Furthermore, the analysis provides policy recommendations in order to tap the full potential of energy cooperation between the EU and Brazil, India, China and South Africa.

This book addresses the question of how the American continent engages with various forms of interregionalism, including how different regions within the Americas deal with other regions of the world as well as how they relate among themselves. The presence of different political, economic, and cultural sub-regions within the Americas makes the continent a perfect setting to explore differences and commonalities in the western hemisphere’s relationship with other regions across the globe. Interregionalism and the Americas tackles three unifying questions. First, what type and understanding of interregionalism characterize the Americas’ way to interregionalism, if any? Second, is summitry ultimately the major visible feature of interregionalism in the Americas and beyond? Third, is there anything typical or characteristic in the way in which the Americas engage with interregionalism? This book contributes both to the theoretical debates about interergionalism and to the empirical understanding of the phenomenon and makes a compelling case to strengthen the inter-American system and to advance a “trilateral interregionalism” mechanism between North America, Latin America, and Europe to stand up for their common values, norms, and preferred international order.

A systematic and wide-ranging survey of the scholarship on regionalism, regionalisation, and regional governance. Unpacking the major debates, leading authors of the field synthesise the state of the art, provide a guide to the comparative study of regionalism, and identify future avenues of research.