Relations between the EU and Latin America and the Caribbean have reached a political impasse over the past decade. However, the challenges of recent years, namely the war in Ukraine, the urgency of finding sustainable solutions to the climate crisis and the rise of the Global South, have highlighted the need to revitalise and strengthen this partnership. In this sense, the resumption of the EU-CELAC summits in July 2023 offered an opportunity to revitalise relations between the EU and Latin America. In theory, by revitalising this partnership, both sides would be able to pursue their objectives of securing their own geo-economic and geopolitical autonomy. At the same time, both sides would be working with like-minded partners interested in protecting and promoting a similar vision of a rules-based world order. In this global and interregional context, this panel seeks to reflect on the various normative, geopolitical and geo-economic challenges that these interregional relations will have to face in order to achieve greater convergence between the two regions, as stated in the final declaration of the EU-CELAC Summit. Despite political declarations from both sides guaranteeing normative and political convergence on fundamental values and norms, the reality has proven to be much more complex and often turbulent. This panel therefore seeks to shed light on the unexplored opportunities of this partnership and to discuss the normative challenges and structural complexities of this relationship. In particular, the panel will focus on issues such as the launch of the Global Gateway, climate change, the EU's pursuit of Strategic Autonomy, and the role of regional organisations on both continents in protecting democracy.

In the debate on the signing of the EU-Mercosur agreement, reference is often made to the EU's geopolitical and geo-economic interests in Latin America. In this context, it makes sense to take a closer look at these interests as reflected in official EU documents (such as the Strategic Compass, the Global Gateway, or the Critical Raw Materials Act), in statements of EU representatives and European governments/politicians, and in academic writings. In a second step, the proposed paths, and mechanisms for implementing the EU's geostrategic goals in Latin America are analyzed. This will be followed by a preliminary assessment of the instruments and results obtained so far to secure the EU's geopolitical and geoeconomic interests in Latin America. It will compare the political and economic position of the EU with that of other relevant external actors in Latin America, such as the United States, China, and Russia. The analysis will be limited to the current EU Commission, whose mandate expires in 2024.

A particular focus will be on the strategic objectives related to the EU's green transition which as part of, as Josep Borrell called it, a “geopolitics of climate change” requires a secure and sustainable supply of significant quantities of critical raw materials, including from Latin America countries. Latin America is an important partner for the EU in limiting climate change both bilaterally, interregionally, and in international forums. But the EU's climate policy is not without contradictions, and it can be seen as imposed by Latin American partners (such as for example the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism) with an unequal distribution of costs and benefits.

The paper analyzes the coordination and participation in international forums of the EU and Latin American governments, trade flows between the two regions, foreign direct investment from the EU in Latin America, and joint declarations, treaties, memorandums of understanding, and agreements between the EU and Latin American countries in the period 2019 to 2014.

During the Spanish presidency of the Council of the European Union during the second half of 2023, the focus on Latin America was certainly expected. Initially, the focus was on upgrading old agreements with Chile and Mexico as well as on finishing possibly one with Mercosur (on the 7th of December there could be an announcement). By December 2021, the European Commission was launching "The Global Gateway Approach" with an initial budget of 300 billion, of which half of it would be allocated almost immediately to the Africa-Europe Investment Package, and around 45 billion to Latin America and the Caribbean. The initial communication from the Commission established a clear value-based approach; “Global Gateway will channel EU spending on global infrastructure development in accordance with the following key principles: "Democratic values and high standards, Good Governance and Transparency, Equal partnerships, Green and clean, Security-focused", and finally and equally, if not more importantly due to its innovative aspect "Catalysing private sector investment". Considering the projects that Global Gateway is funding, with a clear focus on infrastructure and communications, and considering the strong emphasis on values, this could be interpreted as a reaction to the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative. In the case of Chile, the European Union also quickly signed an agreement related to Lithium after Argentina decided to sign with China. Considering all of this, this paper aims to unpack the construction of The Global Gateway Approach with its norms-based rhetoric, and test it within a context, where multiple agreements already exist and might have contradictory goals (trade versus green policies or development versus extractivism). This paper will use the case study of Chile, due to its upgraded agreement being signed in a few days, while having a large amount of reserves of Lithium, and the presence of already these two Global Gateway projects: 1) Production of Green Hydrogen 2) Development of critical raw materials value chains for lithium and copper By unpacking the EU relations with Chile from different angles, (trade agreements, investment, and political discourses), it will be possible also to understand and analyse how cohesive (or not) the Commission has organised its external relations towards a region that has become more relevant recently due to, in part, the presence and influence that China has developed in the region, and the natural resources available, in a context of constant crises and external threats.

Since 2017, Strategic Autonomy has been a guiding concept for the EU's External Action and its capacity to act independently in a contemporary context of increasing international challenges. However, this article contends that conceptualisations of Autonomy are not a European innovation. In fact, scholars in Latin America have been intellectually exploring the notion of autonomy since the second half of the 20th century, contributing epistemologically to the theoretical corpus of international relations (IR), and aiming to reflect upon the conditions of the region to adapt and manoeuvre the global power competition during the Cold War context and beyond. In this sense, this article aims to discuss to what extent the scholarly production on autonomy from Latin America can provide useful insights and critique towards the EU’s conception and application of its idea of Strategic Autonomy, contributing to the assessment and reconceptualisation of the EU's foreign policy in a context where the bloc is increasingly more situated in a peripheral position in the international system. First, the article goes over the key features associated with the EU’s conception of Strategic Autonomy. Secondly, it recovers the literature on Latin American international insertion and foreign policy, and its reflections upon the idea of autonomy in international relations, as well as some applications of these notions by some Latin American countries. Finally, by examining two examples of EU’s contemporary relations (EU-Latin America and EU-China relations), it discusses to what extent the conceptualisations of autonomy from Latin American intellectuals/policy-makers may offer lessons and experiences for the EU to better navigate such a challenging international environment. After all, it concludes by reflecting on whether the EU’s notion of strategic autonomy is compatible and comparable to the latest intellectual developments of the concept in Latin America, highlighting its limitations and challenges to travel to other regions of the world.

Abstract: Many ongoing political crises across the globe, from Venezuela to Myanmar, have generated expectations towards regional organisations to intervene, within or beyond the limits of their mandates and memberships. Building on a literature on sanction politics and democratic conditionality, this paper investigates the variation of regional responses, strategies, methods and resources used to intervene in domestic political crises. ROs have increasingly become a first port of call for both domestic and international actors, beyond traditional debates on national sovereignty, pooling and delegation or orchestration. Over time, more and more ROs become actors in their own right beyond serving as mere arenas of crisis mediation. The paper focuses in particular on the issue of “third-termism” in Latin America, which refers to recurrent attempts of presidents to remain in power beyond the original constitutional limits to their mandate. The analysis looks at how internal (Latin America) and external (European) regional organisations react to such attempts through two questions: (1) How to explain the variation of ROs interventions modes in third-termism? To address that question, several perspectives will be explored: institutional designs, individual leaderships, external actors’ influences or the increasing ROs’ agency. (2) What are the implications of those interventions for RO legitimacies and Member States’ authority and what does it tell us about the role and place of regionalism in democracy?