ABSTRACT
Like all chapters in this second empirical part of the book, its main aim is to explore how the theoretical aspects identified above have shaped the EU’s Association Agreement negotiations in practice. It is organized roughly chronologically, so as to be able to trace the effects of the changing autonomy of individual institutional actors within the EU’s foreign affairs bureaucracy. The main focus of this chapter is then the EU’s initial complex negotiations with Mexico, Mercosur, and Chile, in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Given the recent revival of negotiations with Mercosur, a brief insight into developments up to the political conclusion of negotiations is also given. Overall, these negotiations have been a testing ground for future complex negotiations for EU Association Agreements. Through a side-by-side analysis of the negotiations with Mercosur and Chile, the chapter is able to point to the effect that the preferences of individual institutional actors within the Commission have had on the outcome of each negotiation.
