Eu Foreign Policy Towards Latin America

This book analyzes the relations between two geographical areas with different levels of regional institutionalization: the European Union and Latin America. Characterized by low interdependence and asymmetry, this relationship operates in different levels ranging from EU-individual countries to EU-Latin American summits.

Who shapes the European Union’s policy towards Latin America? How has this EU policy modified individual member states’ relations with the region? This book provides a comparative account of seven member states’ bilateral links with Latin America since 1945, in the context of their EU membership and based on the concept of ‘Europeanization’. It illustrates how and why the main architects of this EU policy have been Spain and Germany. In contrast, Poland, Sweden and Ireland, which had little previous interaction with Latin America, have developed their current relations with that region virtually as a result of their EU membership. The United Kingdom and France lie in the middle: they have been influential in certain policy-areas and key periods in history, while they have adapted to what is done at the EU level in others. Practitioners, established academic experts as well emerging scholars in the field bring to be bear a novel combination of pioneering research and cutting edge conceptual analysis on this important but neglected area of the EU’s foreign relations.

Based on numerous expert interviews and panels in Europe and the Americas this study provides an analysis of the EU policy and the prospects of the 'strategic partnership' between the two regions.

The volume describes, analyses, and evaluates EU-Latin American relation in general with special reference to MERCOSUR and the Carribean. It combines empirical analyses of the development of this relation with a systematic discussion of regionalisation and biregionalism and includes discussions about future developments. In addition, it relates this "biregional" relation into the general framework of global change, U.S.-EU-Latin American relations, and Latin American regionalisation processes. The project summarizes results from a research project, in which leading Latin American and European scholars jointly explored possibilities and limits of EU-Latin American cooperation in the past, present, and future.

This book explores three key issues to understand the redefinition of relations between the European Union (EU) and Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC): the international context, foreign policies of EU member states towards Latin America, and crucial topics on the EU-LAC agenda. At the theoretical level, the book aims to rebalance two debates on EU-LAC relations. First, in the debate between agency and structure, the book stresses that context is a limiting factor of the agent's preferences and actions. Second, in the debate between values and interests, it finds that interests should not be made invariably dependent on values.At the empirical level, two aspects stand out. First, the change and continuity in EU member states' foreign policies also impact the EU's own role in the continent. Second, new topics on the bi-regional and global agenda have the potential to redefine the relations between the two regions.At a time of European alleged decline, this volume argues that the EU remains a highly significant actor in Latin America and the Caribbean."EU-Latin American relations are in a phase of redefinition. This timely book addresses both the structural obstacles and the prospects and areas for deeper cooperation. Against the background of diverging positions of Latin America and the EU in international politics, the proposed decoupling of political and functional agendas should be considered."Detlef Nolte, German Institute für Global and Area Studies (GIGA)"This book makes an original and significant contribution to the study of the relations between the European Union and Latin American and the Caribbean. The volume blends wisely the right doses of scholarly research and policymaking sensitivity, thus making for an innovative read for academics and an insightful contribution for practitioners."Andrés Malamud, University of Lisbon.

Latin America–European Union relations in the twenty-first century provides a valuable overview of transatlantic trade agreement negotiations and developments in the first decades of the twenty-first century. This edited collection examines key motivations behind trade agreements, traces the evolution of negotiations and explores some of the initial impacts of new generation trade agreements with the EU on South American countries. The book makes an important contribution to our understanding of relations between these regions by contextualising relations and trade agendas, both in terms of domestic political and economic policies and broader global trends. It demonstrates the importance of a shift toward mega-regional trade agreements in the 2010s, particularly under the Obama administration in the United States, in shaping South American and European agendas for trade agreement negotiations and their outcomes. Detailed case studies in the book investigate EU relations and negotiations with countries that have successfully negotiated new generation trade agreements with the EU: Mercosur, the Andean states, Chile and Mexico. Other contributions offer a wider overview of EU-Latin American relations, including parliamentary and civil society relations. The net result is a balanced analysis of contemporary EU relations with South America, useful for students and scholars of foreign policy and political economy in both regions.

A critical insight into the politics and economics of relations between the EU and Latin America, particularly Mercosul, highlighting the significance of such relations for multilateralism and the international order.

The first book to explore the EU's record as a global actor since the creation of the Common Foreign and Security Policy in 1993 within the context of the Treaty of Amsterdam and recent decisions relating to NATO and EU enlargement. The chapters focus on: * the interface between EU foreign and trade policies * the EU's relationship with European defence organizations * its behaviour within the OSCE and UN * the institutional consequences of the CFSP * case studies of EU policies towards Central and Eastern Europe and the Maghreb countries. The editors draw the findings together to assess whether the EU has been successful as a global actor and consider the question: can the EU become a more credible, reliable and unitary global actor?