The European Union and Central America: negotiating an interregional agreement

Regional integration schemes have proliferated around the world and with them the interaction between regions or interregionalism. The European Union (EU) has been supporting these integration efforts worldwide, putting special attention to Latin America (CARICOM and the Andean Community) and to the Central American case in particular. Relations with Europe have played an important role in the history of this region, especially in the last decades. Europe’s active participation in the democratic transition was instrumental for the consolidation of peace in the region. These efforts started with the Diálogo de San José (1984). From the European perspective it was clear in that moment that a national and regional approach was needed in order to successfully achieve regional pacification and stability. The Dialog gave birth to an increasing biregional interaction that currently seeks to strength the relations with an Association Agreement (AA). This AA between Central American countries and the EU constitutes the first biregional agreement in the world; but why is the EU interested in strengthening its relations with Central America? Why is the EU negotiating an AA with this region? The present essay seeks to evaluate critically EU’s interest in CA giving priority to the political interest at stake considering that economic motivations are marginal due to the trade among these regions. This paper proposes that EU’s main driving force behind the negotiations is of political nature and its main goals are: (1) to strengthen its actorness in the international community, particularly within the triad and with strong competence with the US; (2) to promote its integration model and the echoing of its process or what some scholars call Europeanization; (3) to promote inter-regionalism and region-to- region dialog by insisting in negotiating with CA as a whole; and finally (4) to use the AA as a tool to achieve and strengthen consensus within state members. Nevertheless it is important to bear in mind that due to the integral characteristics of this accord it strengthens relations on several fields: economical, political and of cooperation which for the EU vision are interdependent issues. Finally I conclude pointing out the main difficulties in exporting a model and suggest future research directions.