Your research challenges the longstanding narrative that the EU and challenges the longstanding narrative that the EU and Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) countries are “natural partners” in global governance. What UN voting patterns most clearly break this myth, and why have divergences deepened in recent years?
The myth of EU and LAC as “natural partners” assumes that, comparing developed and developing countries, Latin Americans would be the Global South actors who are most similar to Europeans in terms of political values and preferences regarding the international order. This image arises from their shared culture and perceived preference for a more diplomatic, less belligerent way of conducting global affairs.
However, what we find in our research tells a very different story. Our comparison of group-to-group affinity reveals that, although EU and LAC countries are similar in some measures, in at least one metric (draft sponsorship), the Group of Latin American and Caribbean Countries (GRULAC) is actually the actor furthest away from the EU. Similarly, while the levels of disagreement in EU and LAC countries’ roll-call votes used to be balanced across themes in the first year of our study (2000), over the course of the decade human rights stood out as the main theme of divergence, joined from 2013 on by disarmament (regular and nuclear). In the article, we identify a common thread in these preoccupations: they reveal a hardening of positions around geopolitical realities that have been more pressing for Europeans than Latin Americans, like security.
You argue that a more “geopolitical Europe” is replacing the EU’s traditional normative role. How is this shift affecting Europe’s credibility and leadership in multilateralism, particularly from a Latin American perspective?
The data presented in our study supports the idea of a more ‘geopolitical Europe’, in the sense that the region has a more ‘realist’ outlook of international relations, in contrast with the ‘normative Europe’ of past decades. Furthermore, we identified that this shift comes at a cost and has affected the EU's position and perception as a normative power. One consequence is the growing divergence between EU and LAC voting positions on certain 'normative' issues, such as human rights and humanitarian assistance, as mentioned above. According to the idea of a natural partnership between the EU and LAC countries, we would expect to see reinforced coordination on these issues over time. However, postures regarding resolutions on topics such as non-proliferation, human rights, and humanitarian assistance have shown significant divergence between Europeans and Latin Americans and each region has moved closer to other parties than to one another. In particular, Europe has become increasingly preoccupied with national security measures and the toll of human suffering as the security scenario deteriorates.
These diverging emphases can be seen in our analysis of the keywords associated with the normative initiatives of each group at the UN General Assembly. This shift has impacted EU-LAC alignment at the UN, with the EU adopting a stance that supports maintaining armaments, condemning human rights violations, and defending intervention measures when necessary. This position contrasts sharply with that of Latin American and Caribbean countries, which continue to advocate a more normative approach, including efforts to moralise the possession of nuclear weapons, as we explore in the article with regards to new resolutions on a ‘humanitarian pledge for the prohibition and elimination of nuclear weapons’ and ‘humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons’ introduced in 2015.
At a time when Brussels is frantically trying to diversify its relations, such misconceptions could increase transaction costs in other EU-LAC dossiers, such as green finance and market access.
In this respect, the increasing focus by European nations on so-called 'realist' issues has exacerbated the divide, undermining Latin American expectations of a pacifist Europe. Indeed, we argue that this realist turn dispels the humanistic aura surrounding the EU-LAC partnership. Even though both regions have consistently shared their commitment to multilateralism, Latin American actors have viewed the emergence of a geopolitical Europe with caution, considering it to be consequential to the EU's global leadership reputation as a normative and moral actor.
At a time when Brussels is frantically trying to diversify its relations, arguably to hedge against the instabilities of overly depending on the US, such misconceptions could increase transaction costs in other EU-LAC dossiers, such as green finance and market access.
Your article highlights that while convergence is weak on many human rights and disarmament issues, there is consistent alignment between the EU and LAC countries on children's rights. What lessons can be drawn for future multilateral cooperation?
EU and GRULAC have cooperated in a recurring UN General Assembly resolution about the rights of the child for as long as our study tracks. There are two lessons that can be drawn from this continuing cooperation. The first is that past agreements can have long-lasting effects. The two regions would be even farther apart today had they not already established and developed this common interest in children’s rights. This is not to say that all shared projects are guaranteed to endure: our data picked up themes on which agreements dissolved into disagreements over time, notably concerning disarmament. Still, the fact that some commonalities persist suggests that present cooperation should be valued for its potential impact in the long run.
The second lesson relates to the subject-matter: scholarship points out that rights of the child have long been a topic that, as fractious and polarizing as international politics can be, offered a point of convergence in the UN. This may well be because of the humane and universal nature of children’s rights. Hence, it is somewhat heartening that this common thread was not severed even as disagreements intensified between the regions in other aspects of the international human rights regime.
Rafael Mesquita is an assistant professor at the Political Science Department, Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE) in Recife, Brazil. Bruno Theodoro Luciano is a researcher at the Institute for European Studies, Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) in Brussels, Belgium.
Both authors are part of the research project "Renewing Perceptions: ideological changes and their normative impacts on relations between the European Union and Latin America" (CNPq 404424/2024-4). This blog is based on their recent article, Busting the Myth of Convergence Between the EU and LAC Countries: Analysis From UN Resolutions.
Photo: Ricardo Stuckert/PR
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