“The evolution of the interregionalism between the European Union (EU) and the Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR). Analysis of the Interregional Framework Cooperation Agreement (1999 - 2019)”

Abstract

The attempts to negotiate an Interregional Framework Cooperation Agreement between the European Union (EU) and the Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR) date since March of 1999. Finally, after twenty years of dialogue, both parts reached an arrangement in June of 2019. The deal was marked by a peculiar international context and changes in the political and economic relations; hence it is possible to identify different periods when the conversations were stopped and then restarted. The latest negotiations were conditioned by the recent changes in the international system, characterised by the globalisation crisis, which used to be based on the international liberal order and multilateral cooperation and now is challenged by unilateral measures applied by some countries, such as the Brexit, the new protectionist policies carried by Trump’s government in the United States, and the trade war between this country and China. It is within this context that the negotiations for an agreement between MERCOSUR and EU were accelerated as an attempt to mitigate the impact of this kind of measures and also to defend the multilateral system in which their foreign policy is based, even overcoming the historical conflict between the two regions regarding the North-South division – at least at the moment when the agreement was signed. The thesis aims at studying the evolution of the Interregional Framework Cooperation Agreement during its twenty years of negotiations (1999 - 2019) keeping into consideration the international context and changes in the political and economic relations between the MERCOSUR and the EU.