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.

Reviews

"This timely and nuanced volume analyzes systematically the range of factors that shape the policies of European countries, both individually and collectively, towards Latin America. The case studies provide rich insights into both the history and contemporary challenges."

—Helen Wallace, London School of Economics and Political Science

"This compilation, offered by specialists on the EU’s external affairs of impeccable credentials in their own national fields, will fill a vacuum in the existing literature of European-Latin American relations. Specifically, the text answers in a clear way how a number of key states have modified their national policies as a result of the EU and how Europe has evolved in its relationship with Latin America."

—Joaquín Roy, University of Miami

Contents

Introduction: Europeanizd National Foreign Policies towards Latin America, Lorena Ruano. Chapter 1. The Conceptual Framework, Lorena Ruano. Chapter 2. Spain: Double Track Europeanization and the Search for Bilateralism, José Antonio Sanahuja. Chapter 3. Germany: From Advocate to Bystander – and Back?, Bettina Trueb. Chapter 4. France: From Uploads to Disengagement, Georges Couffignal. Chapter 5. The United Kingdom: Semi-Detached Uploads, Lorena Ruano and Laurence Whitehead. Chapter 6. Sweden: From Original Profile to ‘Blending in,’ Rebecka Villanueva Ulfgard. Chapter 7. Poland: Download and the Development of a Policy, Piotr Maciej Kaczyski. Chapter 8. Ireland: Direct Download to Tentative Bilateralism, Peadar ó Broin. Conclusion: Changing Dynamics of Europeanization and National Policies towards Latin America, Lorena Ruano

Author Bio

Lorena Ruano is Jean Monnet Chair and Researcher at the Center for the Research and Teaching of Economics (CIDE), Mexico.