EU trade with Latin America and the Caribbean: Overview and figures

Summary:

Collectively, the 33 countries forming the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) are the EU's fifth largest trading partner. The EU has fully fledged agreements with two Latin American groupings (Cariforum and the Central America group), a multiparty trade agreement with three countries of the Andean Community (Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru), and agreements with Mexico and Chile that are in the process of being modernised. Furthermore, the EU has inter-regional and bilateral framework agreements with both Mercosur and its individual members.

The EU's agreements governing trade relations with Latin American and Caribbean subgroupings and individual countries differ considerably in terms of coverage and methodology, depending on the time at which they were concluded and the backdrop to the negotiations. The EU is currently modernising the trade pillars of its agreements with Mexico (an 'agreement in principle' was reached in April 2018) and Chile (negotiations are still ongoing) in order to align them to the current standards of EU FTAs.

If the EU-Mercosur Association Agreement, which includes a trade pillar for which a political agreement was reached in June 2019, is successfully ratified, the EU would then have comprehensive agreements governing trade relations with nearly all of Latin America and the Caribbean (with the exception of Bolivia, Cuba and Venezuela).