Negotiations between the EU and Mercosur: motivations behind the relaunch in 2010

Abstract

This thesis examines the relaunch of the negotiations for an Association Agreement between the European Union (EU) and the Southern Common Market (Mercosur) in order to understand new trends towards interregionalism after the failure of the Doha Round and the motivations of the EU in resuming the talks. The research question leading this work is: What explains the decision of the EU to relaunch negotiations with Mercosur in 2010? Moreover, two hypotheses are presented related to need of EU to re- think their economic integration strategies after the stagnation in Doha and the aim of the bloc of maintaining and strengthening its commercial and regulatory power vis-à-vis China and the United States in Latin America. Knowing the fact that in 2010 negotiations between the two blocs were relaunched, this thesis aims to prove the plausibility of the two hypotheses presented vis-à-vis other possible factors by means of process tracing. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)