Understanding EU's strategic partnerships in Latin America: a comparative assessment of EU-Brazil and EU-Mexico relations

Research on the EU-Brazil and EU-Mexico strategic partnerships are still scarce in the academia. In this context, this paper aims to contribute to the academic literature by briefly revisiting the process of establishment of each one of these relationships and assessing the main challenges with which they are currently faced. Moreover, it presents a comparative analysis of both relationships, increasing our understanding of 'strategic partnership' as a foreign policy concept, of EU strategic partnerships with Latin America, and of current trends in EU-Mexico and EU-Brazil relations. The paper argues and demonstrates that whereas the EU-Brazil strategic partnership follows a descending path, EU-Mexico relations find themselves in an ascending and promising direction. These opposite trends are not only caused by the different political and economic conjunctures of Brazil and Mexico but are also due to the degree of expectations from the parties when it comes to the outcomes of the partnership.