Responsive not strategic: The EU’s policy towards Mercosur

Gomez Arana, Arantza (2011) Responsive not strategic: The EU’s policy towards Mercosur. PhD thesis, University of Glasgow.

Abstract

This thesis seeks to examine the motivations for the European Union’s (EU) policy towards the Common Market of the South (Mercosur), the EU’s most important relationship with another regional economic integration organisation. As such, the EUMercosur relationship has a prominent place in the literature on the EU as a global actor. This thesis argues that the dominant explanations in the literature -- balancing the US, global aspirations, being an external federator, long-standing economic and cultural ties, economic interdependence, and the Europeanization of Spanish and Portuguese national foreign policies – fail to adequately explain the EU’s policy. In particular, these accounts tend to infer the EU’s motives from its activity. Drawing extensive primary documents, this thesis argues that the major developments in the relationship -- the 1992 Interinstitutional Agreement and the 1995 Europe Mercosur Inter-regional Framework Cooperation Agreement – were initiated by Mercosur. Moreover, a free trade agreement was included in the latter agreement which negotiations finally started in 1999 due to the insistence of Mercosur. This means that rather than the EU pursuing a strategy, as impliedby most of the existing literature, the EU was largely responsive. How it responded to Mercosur’s overtures, however, has been influenced by some of the factors highlighted in the literature, most notably the Europeanisation of Portuguese and, particularly, Spanish foreign policies. Also the Commission’s role as external federator has influenced as well, although to a lesser extent. Overall, however, these supposedly causal factors have provided only a very weak impetus for EU policy, which explains in large part why the relationship is much less developed than the EU’s relations with other parts of the world. Beyond providing a distinctive and empirically rich account of the EU’s relationship with Mercosur, this thesis contributes to the literature on the EU as a global actor, particularly the extent to which it is a strategic actor, and to the literature on Europeanization of national foreign policies of member states from a bottom-up perspective with the case of Spain and Portugal.

• Item Type: Thesis (PhD)
• Qualification Level: Doctoral
• Keywords: EU, Mercosur, association agreement, strategic actor, international trade.
• Subjects: F History United States, Canada, Latin America > F1201 Latin America (General); J Political Science > JZ International relations; J Political Science > JN Political institutions (Europe)
• Colleges/Schools: College of Social Sciences > School of Social and Political Sciences > Politics
• Supervisor's Name: Young, Professor Alasdair R.
• Date of Award: 2011
• Embargo Date: 12 July 2015
• Depositing User: Miss MA Gomez-Arana
• Unique ID: glathesis:2011-3512
• Copyright: Copyright of this thesis is held by the author.
• Date Deposited: 13 Jul 2012
• Last Modified: 09 Aug 2024 08:51
• Thesis DOI: 10.5525/gla.thesis.3512
• URI: https://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/3512