ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the relations between the European Union (EU) and Latin American regions or countries, focusing on integration, trade and development aid. It discusses that the EU-Latin American dialogue can be divided into three phases, according to the strategic aims of the EU. The chapter explores the organized European promotion of regionalism in Latin America that followed this initial moment, and the inter-regional collaboration that developed later on. It shows how inter-regionalism is an unavoidable theoretical tool through which to understand the EU's relations with Latin America during the 1990s. During the 1950s and 1960s relations between Europe and Latin America were heavily influenced by the political and economic context of the end of the Second World War. Since 2005 the particular development of Latin American regionalism and political change, both in the EU and in Latin America, have led to a more pragmatic European approach, centred in emerging states either through inter-regional or bilateral contacts.
