Spain, the European Union and Latin America: Governance and Identity in the Making of ‘New’ Inter-Regionalism

Contemporary forms of European inter-regionalist relations with developing countries have their origins in the 1970s. The emergence of the so-called ‘new regionalism’ in the 1990s in response to the transformation of the global order contributed in turn to a transformation of inter-regionalism. Hanggi (2000) argues that, far from being superseded by new regionalism, multi-layered inter-regional arrangements should be understood as its corollary. Nevertheless, the ‘new’ inter-regionalism has so far gone relatively unexamined.

For the European Union (EU), ‘new’ inter-regionalism provides the opportunity to strengthen political and economic ties beyond Europe, to counter US hegemony and to promote a distinctively European mode of governance for the developing world. The different sub-regions of Latin America (Central America, the Andean countries and the Southern Cone) and some of the larger countries themselves such as Mexico, constituted a traditional terrain for European inter-regionalism, as a number of important European diplomatic, political, peace-building and developmental initiatives show.
Not surprisingly, then, they are now becoming an important space for the building of ‘new’ inter-regionalism. The emergence of the Common Market of the South (MERCOSUR), grouping together the Southern Cone countries of Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay, with Bolivia and Chile enjoying associate status, in particular, has opened fresh possibilities for inter-regional collaboration. The EU has singled out the Southern Cone for a novel form of co-operation, initially outlined in Framework Co-operation documents in 1995 and 1996.

The first strand of my argument, then, is that EU-Latin American relations have to be understood primarily as a manifestation of a new form of inter-regionalism that crosses the North-South divide. It takes place within, and constrained by, the global political economy. Moreover, EU-Southern Cone inter-regionalism should be understood as an attempt to a distinctive form of post-Cold War governance. This suggests that the interests of the EU, in the Southern Cone at least, go beyond simply the stabilisation of ‘borders and the commercial environment in which it operates’ (Forster 2000: 789) suggested by the ‘negotiated order’ (Smith 1998).

EU: EEAS: Latin America and the Carribean https://eeas.europa.eu/diplomatic-network/latin-america-and-caribbean_en

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