The Redefinition of the EU Presence in Latin America and the Caribbean
Summary
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
Excerpt
Table Of Contents
- Cover
- Title
- Copyright
- About the author
- About the book
- This eBook can be cited
- Acknowledgements
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- The Redefinition of the EU Presence in Latin America and the Caribbean: An Introductory Discussion
- Part I Foreign Policies and Contextual Factors Moulding EU-LAC Relations
- Spanish Foreign Policy Towards Latin America: Time for Redefinition?
- The Portuguese Foreign Policy Towards Latin America: A Yo-Yo Approach
- Relations Between Germany and Latin America Through Energy Partnerships
- Identity and International Relations: Italian Foreign Policy Towards Latin America
- Brexit, UK and Latin America
- Brazil-EU Relations: Driver, Enabler or Negotiator for Interregionalism?
- Autonomy as a Foreign Policy Objective: Perspectives from Europe and Latin America
- EU-LAC Relations in Times of US-China Competition
- The Challenges of Linking with Latin America and the Caribbean Under Three Crises
- Part II A Reinvigorated Agenda for EU-Latin America Relations
- Proposals for a Functional EU-LAC Agenda, with an Underpinning Political Design
- Rethinking EU-CELAC Interregionalism in the Digital World: Techplomacy as a Foreign Policy Instrument for Global Tech Governance
- Decentralising Cooperation Through Regional Policy Dialogues: Exportation of the European Smart Specialization Strategy to High- and Middle-Income Latin American Countries
- Action for Climate and Life in Terrestrial Ecosystems: Sustainable Development Goals in the European Union and Latin America and the Caribbean – A Synoptic Vision
- The Ecological and Social Transition: An Approach from the Context of the European Union
- Towards Forward-Looking Migration Governance: The Global Compact on Migration from a Bi-regional Perspective
- Europe in Chile: Its Influence on the New Constitutional Design
- Region-to-Region Approach: The EU and the Pacific Alliance
- Context, Foreign Policies, Tools and Ideas: Concluding Remarks on a Continuous Reconfiguration of the EU-LAC Relation
Notes on Contributors
Juan Carlos Aguirre is a Political Scientist with an M.A. in International Studies and a doctoral researcher at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg since October 2018. His research focuses on international politics in Latin America, foreign policy decision-making and regional integration processes. Juan Carlos Aguirre was an advisor for international affairs in different Ministries in Chile. He has also been a lecturer in international relations at various universities in Chile.
Paulina Astroza Suárez is a lawyer and a professor at the University of Concepción, Chile. She has a doctoral degree in Political and Social Sciences, a master’s in Political Science and International Relations and a diploma in International Relations and Comparative Politics, all from the Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium. She is the Director of the European Studies Program at the Universidad de Concepción. Her research areas are European political integration and EU-Latin America relations.
Luís Fernando Beneduzi is Full Professor of Latin American History. Since 2020, he has been the Chair of History and Institutions of the Americas at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. He has previously taught at The Johns Hopkins University, the University of Bologna, and the Lutheran University of Brazil. His main research interests cover international migration, the relations between Europe and Latin America, especially Italy and Brazil, and the nation-state building process in Latin America.
Sergio Caballero is a professor at the Department of International Relations in the University of Deusto, Bilbao (Spain), where he has been Vice Dean as well as the Principal Investigator of the research team “International Relations and Multidimensional Security”. He holds a PhD in International Relations from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. His main research lines include Latin American regional integration and Brazil’s foreign policy, as well as IR theories and EU-Latin American relations.
Belén Cabezas Araya has a degree in Political Science from the Faculty of Government of the University of Chile and is a master’s student in Government and Public Management at the same university.
Carmen Fonseca is an assistant professor of International Relations at Nova University of Lisbon, Portugal, and a researcher at the Portuguese Institute of International Relations (IPRI-NOVA). She was a Visiting Fellow at Getulio Vargas Foundation and at the Institute of Social and Political Studies of the State University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She is the editor of the journal Relações Internacionais. Her research interests cover Brazilian foreign policy, Brazil-Portugal relations and emerging and regional powers.
María J. García is a senior lecturer and the Head in the Department of Politics, Languages and International Studies at the University of Bath (UK). Prior to that, she held a Marie Curie International Fellowship at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. Her research focuses on EU trade policy, EU-Latin American trade agreements, labour and gender clauses in trade agreements, and, more recently, the trade implications of Brexit. She has published extensively on EU-Latin America relations.
Gian Luca Gardini is Chair of History of International Relations at the University of Udine, Italy, and Carlos Saavedra Lamas visiting professor in International Relations at Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany. He has previously taught at the University of Cambridge and at the University of Bath in the UK. His main research interests cover the international relations of Latin America, foreign policy analysis, and comparative regional integration.
Beatriz Larraín Martinez is a professor at the Faculty of Law and Social Sciences of the Universidad de Concepción in Chile. She holds a PhD in Law, Politics and Society from Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts. Her area of interest and research is the judicialisation of politics and judicial activism in Chile and the world. She has been a member of the European Studies Programme of the Universidad de Concepción since its inception in 2002.
Elena Lazarou is an associate fellow in the US and the Americas Programme at Chatham House, UK. She holds a PhD in International Studies from the University of Cambridge. Her research focuses on EU relations with Brazil and Latin America, multilateralism, regionalism, and foreign policy analysis. She was an assistant professor of international relations at the Getulio Vargas Foundation (FGV) in Brazil. She is currently working as the acting head of external policies at the European Parliament’s Research Service.
Jaime León González is a lecturer at the Catholic University of Eichstaett-Ingolstadt, Germany. Formerly he was a researcher and teaching assistant at Friedrich-Alexander University in Erlangen-Nuremberg. His research focuses on Germany’s foreign policy towards Latin America, the role of actors and decision-making processes. He has managed two projects on Latin America sponsored by the Bavarian Virtual High School (VHB). He has previously taught at the University of Bayreuth in Germany.
Paz Verónica Milet is an Associate Professor of the Institute of International Studies of the University of Chile. Her main lines of investigation are multilateralism, spaces for regional integration, Latin American foreign policy, Latin American relations with other regions and Chile’s relations with its neighbours. She also coordinates the Chilean team of the Generation of Dialogue Chile-Perú/Perú-Chile Project and the Chile-Morocco Chair in the frame of the America Latina-Africa Foundation.
Diego Ponce is a research assistant and a student at the School of International Relations of the Getulio Vargas Foundation in São Paulo, Brazil, and a research trainee at ELIAMEP, the Hellenic Institute for European and Foreign Policy, Athens, Greece. Prior to joining ELIAMEP, he also took courses in political science at KU Leuven, Belgium, and at Universität Pompeu Fabra, in Barcelona, Spain.
Millán Requena is an Assistant Professor of Public International Law and International Relations at the University of Alicante, Spain. He is also a visiting professor at the University of Lisbon. He is the author of various publications in the field of International Investment Law; EU law and protection of national minorities in Europe. He was Academic Secretary of the Faculty of Law (2012–2016) and at present, he serves as the Head of the Department of Public International Law and Criminal Law.
Mauricio J. Rondanelli-Reyes is a Biologist, Master of Science, and Doctor of Biological Sciences. Associate Professor at the University of Concepción, Chile. Member of the European Studies Program at the University of Concepción. Researcher on environmental issues, plant ecology and biodiversity. Professor in the chairs of Research Methodology and Conservation Biology. Director of undergraduate and postgraduate theses and author of scientific publications in indexed journals of the discipline.
Javier Sepúlveda Estrada is a law graduate from the Universidad de Concepción, awarded the Rolando Peña López Prize for Best Bachelor Thesis in Public International Law. He was also part of the Chilean Delegation that negotiated at COP 27 in Sharm-El-Sheikh, Egypt. He is also a research assistant and member of the Centre for European Studies at the University of Concepción. His main research interests are integration processes, strategic autonomy, geopolitics and climate change.
Jeanne W. Simon holds a doctoral degree in International Studies from the University of Denver (USA). Her research interests are the democratization and territorialisation of social and economic policies, combining comparative analysis of (sub)national responses with the study of supranational governance, including the European Union and the United Nations. She has led several applied research grants on policy transfer, such as the adaptation of the Swedish EcoMunicipality model to the Chilean context.
Mario Torres Jarrín is Director of the Institute of European Studies and Human Rights at the Pontifical University of Salamanca in Spain. Previously, he was Director of International Relations at the Pontifical University of Salamanca, and Director of the European Institute of International Studies in Sweden. He holds a PhD in History from the University of Salamanca. His research interests include international relations and diplomacy, EU Foreign affairs and security, and EU-Latin America relations.
Alwine Woischnik is an independent consultant on Ecological and Social Transition. She holds a PhD in Economics and Social Sciences from Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany. She was a member of the Environmental Advisory Council at the Ministry of Public Works, Transport and Environment in Spain and an Advisor on environment, employment and training at the Ministry of Labour in Chile. She was a lecturer at the Universidad Carlos III, Madrid and the Escuela Diplomática de Cuba.
Sandra Zapata is a post-doctoral researcher at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg in Germany. She holds a PhD in Social Sciences from Salamanca University, Spain. She has a master’s in International Relations from FLACSO-Ecuador and in Development Policies from Seoul National University in South Korea. Her research topics include US-China competition, South-South cooperation, regionalism and the international political economy of development.
Gian Luca Gardini
The Redefinition of the EU Presence in Latin America and the Caribbean: An Introductory Discussion
Changing circumstances and the need for a profound debate on EU-LAC relations
The project “The Redefinition of the EU Presence in Latin America and the Caribbean” (EUinLAC) was conceived and launched between 2019 and 2020. The European Union Jean Monnet programme generously financed it in 2020, and the project activities were carried out between 2020 and 2023. The project is the successor to another Jean Monnet programme entitled “Relations between Europe and Latin America: Future Scenarios in a Changing World” (Astroza and Larraín, 2022). This endeavour aimed at sketching some challenges and notable features of the bi-regional relationship in a fast-changing international context. Consequently, the timespan between 2019 and 2020 really seemed the appropriate moment to go further and reflect on a possible redefinition of the EU’s role, activities and image in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC).
Precisely at that moment, or better phrased, from that moment on, new unexpected challenges have been shaking the foundations of the international liberal order (which was already under strain), its underpinning values, and its most evident manifestation: globalisation and its associated governance. The Covid-19 pandemic, Russia’s war in Ukraine, the need for a green transition altering modes of production and lifestyles have powerfully broken out and settled at the core of the international agenda between 2020 and 2023. This phase of transition and the changes that it brings with it call for an even deeper rethinking of the rationale underpinning the EU-LAC relationship (Sanahuja, 2022), and more specifically the EU’s presence in the region and globally. This project, and this book along with it, is a response to this compelling call.
In the last few years, a number of events and initiatives have prompted a debate on the present and future of EU-LAC relations. Between 2019 and 2020, the scenario was not entirely favourable to a new European elan in LAC. There had been no EU-LAC political summit since 2015. On the one hand, the EU was still dealing with the consequences – more potential than actual in fairness (Gardini, 2019, 2020a) of Brexit for its outreach capacity. The image and reputation of the EU in Latin America were overall positive but trailed way behind China’s (in spite of growing fears of Chinese activism and assertiveness on the continent) and the Unites States’ (in spite of Trump’s unilateralism and his Latin American policies swinging between disinterest and imposition). In spite of a solid and satisfactory political, commercial, aid, and cultural bi-regional relationship, the support for the EU was quite lukewarm in Latin America (Latinobarometro, 2018).
On the other hand, between 2019 and 2020, Latin America itself was going through difficult times in the political, economic and social realms. Politically, LAC was divided on a range of topics spanning from the Venezuelan crisis to the development model and the position vis-à-vis China. In economic terms, three of the major economies in the continent (Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela) had experienced deep recessions in the previous years. Socially, protests and unrest shook some of the most stable and better-performing countries such as Chile, Colombia and Ecuador. Latin American regionalism reached a stalemate and was clearly under strain (Nolte & Weiffen, 2020). Overall, Latin America and the Caribbean as a region were consistently losing ground at the global level, continuing a trend of decline that has been lasting for the last century (Malamud & Schenoni, 2021). The situation on the LAC side also prompted a rethinking of the bi-regional links.
Against all odds, or perhaps in reaction to this negative perception, in 2019 several promising developments took place that made the need for a profound rethinking of the EU-LAC relationship even more evident. In April, after ten years of silence, the European Commission (2019) issued a new communication on the European Union, Latin America and the Caribbean aimed at designing the pillars of a new EU approach towards the region. In May, Germany identified Latin America as a key partner for its international strategy (Federal Foreign Office, 2019). The bi-regional partnership now enjoyed the full support of the EU’s single most powerful political and economic player. In June of the same year, the European Union and Mercosur reached a political agreement on a trade deal. At the end of the year, a new Commission, on paper more favourable to Latin America, took office. All this created a basis to upgrade and strengthen the bi-regional relationship, which in turn prompted a need for a thorough reflection on where to take it and how to lead it. Therefore, there is a need for academic thinking on the topic.
That was back at the beginning of 2020. Then the Covid-19 pandemic came in early 2020 with its global political, economic, social, and lifestyle impact (Gardini, 2020b). Then Russia’s war in Ukraine with its global implications broke out in 2022. In the meantime, the long-awaited 2019 Commission Joint Communication did not bear much fruit; Germany has not followed up on its enthusiasm towards Latin America and neither the German nor the Portuguese presidencies of the European Union have prioritised LAC in any way. The EU-Mercosur agreement is far from ratification and negotiations to finalise the agreement still have to address substantial issues such as the economic, social and environmental dimensions of sustainable development (Malamud, 2022; European Commission, 2023). The European Commission led by Ursula Von der Leyen has thus far not dedicated any special attention to Latin America and the Caribbean. This can all be justified and condoned by the urgencies, rescheduling and adjustments required by the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. Again, a new rethinking of the EU-LAC bi-regional interaction is required and both policy-makers and academia must contribute.
Furthermore, the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and the green transition have highlighted a key challenge for the EU-LAC relation: the questioning of the common values underpinning the bi-regional relationship. This was perceived as largely based on shared values with a long historical and deep-seated cultural tradition (Borrell, 2020). One may wonder if this is still the case today. The Covid-19 pandemic has prompted a feeling in Latin America that Western powers had abandoned Latin America whereas China had come to the rescue. This is far from true: the EU committed nearly 1 billion Euros in the first few months of the pandemic to support Latin America’s resilience (European Commission, 2020). Still, the pandemic has strengthened the role and image of China in Latin America (Heine, 2020). Solidarity and compassion between the two shores of the Atlantic seem to be questioned. If Europe moves towards “strategic autonomy” (Tocci, 2021), and Latin America towards “active non-alignment” (Fortin, Heine, Ominami, 2021), will the space for cooperation be curtailed?
Perhaps more importantly, Latin America was divided at the UN and the OAS when voting on resolutions regarding Russia’s illegal and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. The EU stayed united. This casts doubts on the fact that values such as democracy, rule of law, self-determination, non-interference are really shared by Europe and Latin America, to the point that one can wonder if a bi-regional community of values still exists (Nolte, 2022). Latin America’s reaction before the US position vis-à-vis Cuba and Venezuela on the occasion of the 2022 Summit of the Americas confirms that the continent is going through a questioning of what democracy means and how it helps or hinders regional and global governance. If a redefinition of shared values occurs, then a redefinition of the relationship that was largely thought to be based on those common values may also be required.
Same as in 2020, also in 2023 there is not only bad news. In June 2023, the Commission’s President Von der Leyen visited key partners in Latin America, such as Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Mexico, in search for rare-earth metals indispensable to the EU’s green transition and support for the EU’s position on the war in Ukraine. In July, a bi-regional summit at the highest level took place after eight years. While this was per se a significant development, it also showed the divergences that still exist between Europe and Latin America and the Caribbean. Furthermore, the EU’s global presence and projection are kicking and alive; the EU Global Gateway is Brussels’s response to the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative. The image of the EU in the perception of Latin American citizens in 2022 has improved in comparison to 2018 (Nueva Sociedad, 2022). Same as in the previous years, the context and the contingent interests associated to it largely dictated the agenda and positions of the bi-regional relationship
All these developments necessitate yet another deep and articulated discussion on the EU presence in LAC. The context, the actors and the tools moulding the EU-LAC relation all deserve attention. The structural circumstances affect the context where the bi-regional relation takes place. The foreign policies of single countries have the potential to drive EU-LAC interactions. Bold and innovative ideas are essential for an effective, practical, and result-oriented bi-regional agenda. This book is a timely effort to start a frank, open, informed and constructive discussion on all these matters and the redefinition of the EU presence in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The book ahead
The book is structured in two parts. Part I (Chapters 1–9) addresses the foreign policy and roles of some key European states towards LAC, and Brazil’s policy towards the EU. Part I also analyses some systemic and contextual factors affecting the development of EU-LAC relations. Part II (Chapters 10–17) addresses some key topics on the EU-LAC agenda and proposes some new ideas and additional reflections on the nature and content of the bilateral agenda.
In Chapter 1, Sergio Caballero addresses the evolution and relevance of Spain’s foreign policy towards Latin America. A historical overview is provided in order to highlight the main turning points in Spain’s foreign policy towards the region since the transition to democracy. At the same time, the chapter emphasises Spain’s role in bi-regional relations through Ibero-American Summits and other diplomatic efforts. The context plays an important role in making sense of both the main challenges and the potential synergies. Finally, a reflection on the current scenario highlights both Madrid’s role as a bridge between Brussels and Latin America, and the impact of other extra-regional actors on EU-LAC relations.
Details
- Pages
- 330
- Year
- 2023
- ISBN (PDF)
- 9783631909164
- ISBN (ePUB)
- 9783631909171
- ISBN (Hardcover)
- 9783631889770
- DOI
- 10.3726/b21282
- Open Access
- CC-BY
- Language
- English
- Publication date
- 2023 (November)
- Keywords
- European Union Latin America inter-regionalism foreign policy EU-LAC relations
- Published
- Berlin, Bern, Bruxelles, New York, Oxford, Warszawa, Wien, 2023. 330 pp., 1 fig. b/w, 2 tables.
