The European Union’s Trade Policy towards MERCOSUR

Interregional relations between the European Union and MERCOSUR reflect a general trend of governments and firms to institutionalise their relations not only within but also across regions. As the global liberalization process within the WTO has been stagnating in recent years, transregional strategies have become attractive as next-best strategies. Against this background, the following analysis focuses on the institutional development of EU-MERCOSUR relations and the driving forces behind this development from a European perspective. This, because shedding some light on the political economy of relations between two of the most ambitious integration mechanisms of the 1990s should deepen our understanding of the forces shaping the growing importance of transregional and interregional trade relations. Rather than trying to explain the course of EUMERCOSUR relations by one dominant hypothesis, I make an appeal for a multi-causal framework, highlighting three aspects of particular importance from a bottom up perspective. Firstly, one can observe that the interplay of economic interest groups has strongly influenced the course of interregional institutionalisation between the EU and MERCOSUR. ) Secondly, political actors have not acted as mere agents of private interest but also have followed their own political agendas. Thirdly, the European Union’s interregional trade strategy towards MERCOSUR has not been independent of the international context. Jörg Faust, Institut für Politikwissenschaft, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz