Latin America today: what kind of partner for the EU?

Lorena Ruano, European Union Institute for Security Studies (Paris)

In the run up to the bi-regional EU-CELAC summit in El Salvador in October, there is talk of a unique opportunity to boost this relationship, due to a rapidly shifting international context. But, what sort of partner will the EU encounter in San Salvador this autumn?

Latin America and the Caribbean today is a war-free but violent and corrupt region, with institutional consolidation problems and an increasingly contested human rights and democracy regime. It is facing an economic downturn that threatens the gains of the past decade and is vulnerable to the vagaries of its external partners, especially changes in US policy. For that reason, the EU is a necessary ally in the perpetual struggle to diversify LAC’s political and economic links. Despite a multiplicity of regional cooperation schemes (MERCOSUR, Pacific Alliance, CELAC, the OAS), which will be analysed in detail during the talk, regional coordination remains elusive, and expectations about what CELAC can produce should be kept low in the first instance. Deeper cooperation is more viable at a bilateral and sub-regional level, but for some countries of the region this dialogue is the only structured political and cooperation forum they share with the EU.