Publications /
Policy Paper

Back
MERCOSUR experience in regional integration: what could Africa learn from it?
Authors
Pedro da Motta Veiga
Sandra Polónia Rios
June 25, 2019

MERCOSUR is almost thirty years old. The project has achieved relevant accomplishments, but it has also accumulated many unfulfilled objectives and even some setbacks. It began with a very ambitious goal: the constitution of a common market. This ambition was quickly reduced to a customs union project, still a far-reaching objective. Africa, by its side, has undergone, since many decades, relevant regional and sub-regional integration experiences, some of which share the ambitions of MERCOSUR. This paper intends to extract from MERCOUR’s experience some clues that could be useful for the African debate on the challenges faced by the regional integration projects in the continent. The most relevant criterion to evaluate the effectiveness of the integration project should be its ability to influence and shape the behavior of public and private players within and outside the bloc. MERCOSUR has become a project with a limited degree of effectiveness, except for a few number of players. This is the result of the convergence of factors that have reduced the predictability of the integration process and the relevance of its rules, especially vis à vis the national rules of the member countries. Sustained economic growth for MERCOSUR’s economies will demand a reform of the bloc’s integration model, and particularly of its common external policy.

RELATED CONTENT

  • Authors
    November 4, 2021
    The rhythm of samba is being replaced by funeral hymns. Almost 560,000 Brazilians (608,000 as of October 31,2021) have succumbed to COVID-19, the world’s second highest death toll, and no end is in sight. There have been “Staggering losses”, as the BBC reported (on July 8), provoking Medecins sans Frontières to warn of a “humanitarian catastrophe” in Brazil. Supplies of drugs and oxygen, confirmed British publication The Lancet, “are running short”. Yet, Jair Bolsonaro, president o ...
  • August 02, 2021
    This podcast with Mr Marcus de Freitas, a Senior Fellow at Policy Center for the New South, discusses elements revolving around Brazil’s current strategy in Africa. It engages with histor ...
  • Authors
    Sabine Cessou
    July 19, 2021
    With no hesitation, Daniela Varela describes herself as a “good-listener, and a perseverant person with a positive-attitude”. Born and raised in Posadas, Misiones, a province of North-East Argentina bordering Paraguay and Brazil, she knew from a young age she wanted to work in international relations. Today, she is an International affairs advisor in the Ministry of Education of Argentina. She also holds the position of Secretary for International Affairs of the Latin American Asso ...
  • Authors
    Bruno Souza
    June 18, 2021
    This paper estimates the economic impacts of climate change over the Brazilian regions until the end of the century. We estimate the direct and indirect impact of the projected changes in climate on the yield of the country’s main crops. The results point to a broad spatial heterogeneity of impacts across the country. Using the extreme scenarios created by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (RCP 2.6 and 8.5), our predictions indicate that the average annual losses ...
  • Authors
    June 7, 2021
    First appeared at AMERICAS QUARTERLY A growing global imbalance threatens to further weaken already vulnerable emerging markets. The massive vaccine disparities between advanced and developing economies may exacerbate what the IMF has dubbed “divergent recoveries”—with dire consequences for Latin America. Despite being home to only 8% of the world’s population, the region has already suffered nearly 30% of all global COVID-19 deaths. The pandemic has also hit GDP and employment ha ...
  • March 3, 2021
    Brazil, an oil-exporting nation, was still struggling to recover from the depression which started around 2014/15 when it was hit by a quick succession of shocks: the COVID-19 pandemic and the oil price collapse. The global pandemic triggered major economic dislocations and contractions in foreign and domestic markets, which further exacerbated the fall in demand for oil, sending world prices tumbling further. Poverty was already widespread in Brazil pre-pandemic. And despite recen ...
  • Authors
    December 23, 2020
    This article was originally published on Bruegel  A recovery from the COVID-19 recession is underway though the suffering is far from over, especially for the most vulnerable. Inequality is both a consequence of the pandemic and a cause of its severity. Many countries need comprehensive policy change to address its worst effects. At the end of a tragic year marked by pandemic and increased poverty, the miraculously rapid arrival of vaccines stirs great hope. The COVID-19 recession ...
  • Authors
    Inácio F. Araújo
    December 18, 2020
    We estimate the contents of services value-added incorporated in goods exports in different countries in Latin America, exploring the local dimension of the results. We use inter-regional input–output analysis to trace and map domestic value-added embedded in those countries' exports. We add to the discussion of global value chains the internal, within-country geography of trade in value-added, since the set of locational preferences that help understanding the spatial patterns of n ...
  • Authors
    Márcio Issao Nakane
    December 17, 2020
    Brazil is one of the countries hardest hit by COVID-19. Apart from the dramatic health implications, COVID-19 will also scar the Brazilian economy, including through a jump in its already high public-sector debt-to-GDP ratio in 2020. Moving forward—or not—with structural reforms aimed at lifting private investment will define whether a sustainableor unsustainable—growth-cum-debt trajectory will prevail in the next decade. The extent to which Brazil regains its attractiveness for for ...