Who shapes the European Union’s policy towards Latin America? How has this EU policy modified individual member states’ relations with the region? This book provides a comparative account of seven member states’ bilateral links with Latin America since 1945, in the context of their EU membership and based on the concept of ‘Europeanization’. It illustrates how and why the main architects of this EU policy have been Spain and Germany. In contrast, Poland, Sweden and Ireland, which had little previous interaction with Latin America, have developed their current relations with that region virtually as a result of their EU membership. The United Kingdom and France lie in the middle: they have been influential in certain policy-areas and key periods in history, while they have adapted to what is done at the EU level in others. Practitioners, established academic experts as well emerging scholars in the field bring to be bear a novel combination of pioneering research and cutting edge conceptual analysis on this important but neglected area of the EU’s foreign relations.

This book analyzes the relations between two geographical areas with different levels of regional institutionalization: the European Union and Latin America. Characterized by low interdependence and asymmetry, this relationship operates in different levels ranging from EU-individual countries to EU-Latin American summits.

The Handbook of Latin America in the World explains how the Latin American countries have both reacted and contributed to changing international dynamics over the last 30 years. It provides a comprehensive picture of Latin America’s global engagement by looking at specific processes and issues that link governments and other actors, social and economic, within the region and beyond. Leading scholars offer an up-to-date state of the field, theoretically and empirically, thus avoiding a narrow descriptive approach. The Handbook includes a section on theoretical approaches that analyze Latin America’s place in the international political and economic system and its foreign policy making. Other sections focus on the main countries, actors, and issues in Latin America’s international relations. In so doing, the book sheds light on the complexity of the international relations of selected countries, and on their efforts to act multilaterally. The Routledge Handbook of Latin America in the World is a must-have reference for academics, researchers, and students in the fields of Latin American politics, international relations, and area specialists of all regions of the world.

On 1 July 2000 regulations to liberalize trade flows between Mexico and the European Union came into force, after more than six years of diplomatic work and complex negotiations. These regulations are part of the "Tratado de Libre Comercio (TLCUEM), which is also one of the components of the Agreement on Economic Association, Political Concertation and Cooperation ("Global Agreement"). The Global Agreement through its three components - political dialogue, trade liberalization and cooperation- was at the time the most ambitious agreement ever constituted by the EU. The economic association component included in the Global Agreement - the TLCUEM- was the first overseas free trade treaty and served as an important precedent for later EU negotiations with other Latin American countries. The purpose of this essay is to analyze the reasons that led Mexico and the EU to the constitution of this treaty; to describe the main challenges of the Global Agreement negotiations of different components; and to briefly review the results of the first three years since the TLCUEM enforcement.

Interregionalism, the institutionalized relations between world regions, is a new phenomenon in international relations. It also a new layer of development in an increasingly differentiated global order. This volume examines the structure of this phenomenon and the scholarly discourse it is generating. It takes stock of empirical facts and theoretical explanations, bringing together with clarity and concision the latest research on this key area. This essential new book: * traces the emergence of interregionalism and reviews the latest literature * provides a conceptual and theoretical framework for study * includes case studies of inter-regional relations between: Asia and America; Asia and Europe; Europe and America; and Europe and Africa. * delivers comparative analyses and special cases such as continental summits and interregional relationships beyond the Triad. * summarizes and evaluates the findings of each chapter, providing a basis for further research. This is a key reference book for students and researchers of regionalism, global governance and international relations.