Consultation not Contestation: Brazilian civil society in EU-Mercosur Association Agreement negotiations

ABSTRACT

The aim of this article is to explore the role of Brazilian civil society in interregional trade between 2003 and 2020, with a focus on negotiations between the European Union and the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). I draw on document analysis from Mercosur’s online archives and from interviews with actors engaged in trade at the time analyzed, supported by the Modes of Participation framework. This approach allowed for a uniquely critical perspective on Mercosur’s participatory structure. I aim to find out: who was represented in negotiations; what forms of participation were permitted; and who were the actors who pushed for the creation of participatory channels. My hypothesis is that, by establishing modes of participation, government elites have filtered out dissenting voices from channels which could potentially influence negotiations, while civil society representatives created participatory spaces in response to perceived limitations. Results show that societal dissent was contained first by a proliferation of channels and mechanisms for limited participation from 2003, and from 2016 onwards by limiting access to government officials and reports on negotiating rounds. Furthermore, it was found that contentious actors, excluded from negotiations, created their own spaces for participation, such as drafting collective statements and lobbying Brazilian congresspeople.

KEYWORDS:

• Brazilian civil society
• interregional trade
• Mercosur
• European Union
• modes of participation

Introduction

If ratified, the Association Agreement between the European Union and the Southern Common Market¹ would be the biggest of its kind, directly affecting the lives of over 780 million people. This article examines the modes of participation of Brazilian civil society in agreement negotiations. After more than 20 years of deliberations, the two blocs reached a preliminary trade agreement in 2019, which has been subjected to criticism from civil society in South America and Europe for lack of transparency and societal input in negotiations (Frente Brasileira Contra o Acordo, 2020). Meanwhile, studies have highlighted worrying potential impacts on the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest and on labour standards in Southern Common Market (Mercosur) countries, were the agreement ratified (Kehoe et al., 2020).

The participation literature in general assumes that increased societal involvement in policy-making reduces concerns about potential negative impacts. Active exchanges between governments and civil society (CS)² can lead to better-informed advice and a more democratic outcome (Scholte, 2002). However, the impact of CS participation in EU-Mercosur Association Agreement (EUAA) negotiations is unclear. My goal is to identify aspects of the Mercosur structure that determine who could participate and how, using EUAA negotiations as a case study. To test the hypothesis that, by establishing modes of participation, government elites have filtered out dissenting voices from channels which could potentially influence negotiations, while Brazilian civil society created participatory spaces in response (Gerard, 2014), I performed document analysis of data from four Mercosur bodies. The analysis was corroborated by five participant interviews of civil society representatives and former government officials. To present and engage with the findings, I have structured the article as follows. First, I introduce the Modes of Participation framework, its main hypothesis, and the contexts in which it has been applied. I then provide an overview of the turn-of-the-century changes leading to the creation of participatory mechanisms in Mercosur, and how the Brazilian government’s engagement of CS changed in this period. I then briefly describe the background to the case study, EUAA negotiations. Next, I showcase the research materials and methods utilized to carry out this investigation. Finally, I present the findings, going through each of the Mercosur bodies, government mechanisms, and CS initiatives investigated.

Modes of Participation in Regional Organizations

The Modes of Participation (MoP) framework is based on a critical perspective of International Political Economy (Chodor, 2020, 2021; Gerard, 2014; Gerard & Mickler, 2021; Jayasuriya & Rodan, 2007). The main hypothesis behind it, which I aim to test in this article, is that channels for CS participation are created by elites to contain and regulate conflicts emanating from the inequalities that result from the expansion of free trade. In response, social actors contrary to free trade may establish their own channels for participation, or ‘created spaces’. The creation of new official participatory channels, accompanied by post-hegemonic³ rhetoric, categorize what I call the ‘social and participatory turn’ in Mercosur. This shift is by extent also observable in the Brazilian government’s engagement of CS. A similar shift can be observed in the case of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), as will be explained below. CS representatives invited to participate in official channels have, for the most part, a consultive role, without exerting what MoP authors call ‘political participation’ (Chodor, 2021). Positions taken by representatives are usually technical and favourable to the expansion of free trade. Allowing political participation would imply allowing CS representatives to contest the expansion of free trade or propose agendas that would directly contradict it. In periphery countries similar to Brazil, wealth arising from the expansion of free trade has been unevenly distributed. This in turn generates social dissent that can lead to contestation by CS representatives. The expansion of free markets is widely seen as exacerbating socioeconomic inequality and consequently struggles to garner support in the periphery (Chodor, 2015). The dissatisfied can, in response, mobilize protest on different scales and in different ways, for example by demanding a greater voice on the setting of the regional trade agenda. They can also establish ‘created spaces’, which are independent from elite-established ones and are primarily formed by excluded actors, representing ‘uncivil society’ (García, 2017). These spaces include protests and parallel summits (Gerard, 2014). They are temporary, ad hoc, and initially unconcerned with attracting the participation of officials. The impact of unofficial mobilizations on trade policy-making, however, is debated (Gerard & Mickler, 2021).

The MoP framework was created to analyze political shifts during transitions to democracy in Southeast Asia (Jayasuriya & Rodan, 2007). Gerard (2014) extended it to study participatory mechanisms within ASEAN. The regional bloc’s leaders implemented reforms to address democratic deficits and economic inequalities, promoting a ‘people-oriented ASEAN’ (Gerard, 2014) as an attempt to regain legitimacy. Similarities can be seen in South American regional integration, particularly Mercosur. Economic inequality, worsened by free market expansion and neoliberal policies – for instance, reduced government spending – is a pressing issue in Mercosur countries, notably Brazil (Chodor, 2015). Originating from democratic transitions and economic crises in Brazil and Argentina, Mercosur aimed to promote and consolidate democracy in the Southern Cone of Latin America (Gardini, 2010). Later, turn-of-the-century presidencies recognized the need to address socioeconomic inequalities in Mercosur countries instead of exacerbating them, and promoted rhetorical shifts in policy-making to that end. Although there has always been pressure from some sectors in society, in particular large exporters, for Mercosur to be ‘de-politicized’ (Chodor, 2021) and refrain itself to upending trade barriers, the bloc is far from being merely a customs union. Politicized declarations made at the regional level, including the 2004 ‘Buenos Aires consensus’,⁴ indicate that, at least rhetorically, socioeconomic inequality has been one of Mercosur’s concerns (Prevost, 2005; Mace and Lockhart, 2019); while presidents of Mercosur countries have also stated the need to involve civil society in policy-making (Vigevani & Ramanzini Junior, 2022). It is thus surprising to see how apologetic of shortcomings in societal participation the literature on South American regionalism has been thus far, with a few exceptions (for a notable one, see Mace, 2021).

Civil Society in Early Mercosur and the ‘Social Turn’

Mercosur emerged during the neoliberal administrations of Fernando Collor of Brazil and Carlos Menem of Argentina, influenced both by the ‘Washington Consensus’⁵ and ‘interpresidential’⁶ policy-making (Botto, 2022; Malamud, 2022; Tussie, 2009). In theory, Mercosur was created as a market-building initiative with little concern about addressing inequalities caused by the free trade expansion it promotes (Riggirozzi, 2015). The 1991 Asunción Treaty ‘did not envisage any involvement on the part of civil society in the activities of [Mercosur] given its exclusive focus on commercial and economic relations’ (Mace, 2021, p. 710). The term ‘civil society’ was not even introduced in Mercosur documents until 2003 (Ibid.). Interestingly, the creation of Mercosur nonetheless received support from the majority of Brazilian CS at the time (Vigevani & Ramanzini Junior, 2022), even though peasant movements initially rejected the bloc (Interview, 11 January 2023). The first bodies for CS participation in Mercosur emerged during the bloc's ‘transition period’, from 1991 to 1994 (MERCOSUR, 2015).⁷ Business associations and trade unions were the first sectors of CS to effectively advocate for representation in Mercosur (Mariano, 2011). For example, trade union networks successfully pressured for the creation of the Economic-Social Consultive Forum (FCES) in 1994 (Interview, 14 December 2022).

Outside of the ‘private sector’, social movement organizations affiliated with the Brazilian Network for the Integration of the Peoples (REBRIP) also played a significant role in the mobilization against the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA or ALCA) (Saguier, 2007; Interview, 6 January 2023). Unlike the FTAA, Mercosur was seen by Brazilian CS as a potential platform for participation in trade policy-making. In search of greater legitimacy, Mercosur elites responded to some of the demands from trade unions and business coalitions for participation. During the transition period, the creations of spaces such as the FCES and the Working Subgroup 11 (SGT 11)⁸ motivated the insertion of CS in Mercosur. However, until 2004, business’ influence still dominated meetings over labour’s, while social movement organizations and networks were initially excluded from participating in the FCES altogether (Newell et al., 2006, Icaza et al., 2010). The pervasiveness of the term ‘private sector’ in early documents reflects Mercosur’s focus on the expansion of free trade, with little consideration for non-productive sectors of CS (Grugel, 2005). Botto (2014) has gone as far as calling trade unions’ reluctance to aggregate social movements to CS’ presence in Mercosur supremacía sindical (labour supremacy). It was probably only with the double economic crises⁹ of 1998 and 2001 in Brazil and Argentina (Sanahuja & Rodríguez, 2019) that more significant demands for representation began to emerge. Forces from various sectors of CS, academics and small farmers, began to question the legitimacy of the bloc (Ribeiro Hoffmann, 2015; Ribeiro Hoffmann & van der Vleuten, 2007; Riggirozzi & Grugel, 2015), since they perceived the double crises as linked to decisions taken at the Mercosur level, and societal input to be insufficient. The crises also added to an electoral focus on wealth distribution issues in Mercosur countries. They spurred a challenge to the Washington Consensus that culminated in the election of post-hegemonic governments during the ‘pink tide’¹⁰ (Riggirozzi & Tussie, 2012) and the consequent expansion of participatory mechanisms. In Brazil, the 2002 election of former trade unionist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Lula) as president brought a reformist stance towards Mercosur (Vigevani & Ramanzini Junior, 2022). Lula, the first Worker’s Party (PT) president, emphasized a ‘neo-developmental’ economic agenda (Botto, 2022) and promoted civil society participation in policy-making (Mace, 2021). As their presence in Mercosur increased, social movement networks were named in interviews as ‘pushing for the creation of REAF’¹¹ and other innovations to the Mercosur structure at the social and participatory turn (Interview, 6 January 2023).

Prior to the twenty-first century, civil society’s role in South American regionalism, particularly non-business sectors, was only minimally studied (one exception being Grandi & Bizzozero, 1997). Deeper investigations of CS involvement in regional integration emerged with the social and participatory turn and the broader debate on ‘post-hegemonic regionalism’ (Riggirozzi & Tussie, 2012). Concerned with changing patterns in South American governance, post-hegemonic regionalism literature focused on analyzing, for example, non-governmental entities and their role in reshaping regional organizations (Riggirozzi & Tussie, 2012). The issue of inter-sectoral cooperation within the Union of South American Nations (Unasur),¹² in particular, gained significant attention in the early 2010s. Unasur, on one hand, is a highly politicized regional body whose main areas of cooperation include infrastructure, health, and defence. Mercosur, on the other hand, has been from the beginning, but not exclusively, a market-building initiative. Perhaps due to this trade emphasis at the heart of Mercosur, the literature has largely overlooked the participation of ‘non-productive’ sectors of civil society in the bloc. There remains a dearth of critical empirical analyses of Mercosur’s participatory mechanisms, as studies are mostly limited to critiquing the bloc’s democratic deficit (e.g., Grugel, 2005; Hochstetler, 2011; Ratton Sanchez, 2016). A thorough empirical analysis should investigate, for instance, the driving factors behind the creation of participatory channels, who is allowed to participate, and permitted forms of participation (Gerard, 2014). Studies on CS participation in South American regionalism are also mostly limited to the period between 2003 and 2013, with few subsequent investigations (e.g., Mace, 2021). This, as I will discuss below, coincides with the peak of governmental engagement of CS in Brazil.

The EU-Mercosur Association Agreement Negotiations: A Brief Overview

EUAA negotiations span more than two decades, starting with the signing of the Interregional Cooperation Framework Agreement between Mercosur and the European Community in 1995 (Gomez, 2017). The period between 1995 and 2019 does not represent uninterrupted negotiations, with periods of several years of little or no movement in negotiating positions, for example between 2004 and 2010 (Bianculli, 2016) and again between 2012 and 2016 (Sanahuja & Rodríguez, 2019). This was in part due to the reluctance of some European countries in exposing their agricultural sectors to competition from Mercosur (Gomez, 2017), later joined by European civil society’s concerns towards the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest. The EUAA is comprised of three pillars: political dialogue, cooperation, and trade. In short,

The first pillar institutionalized a political dialogue for bi-regional consultations and coordination […] the second foresaw cooperation in fields, such as war on drugs, culture, information, and communication […] the third and last pillar focused on strengthening economic and commercial cooperation which would include liberalization of all trade in goods and services (Botto & Bianculli, 2011, p. 93, own emphasis).

The central point of controversy, and the focus of negotiations, lies within the trade pillar of the agreement, which touches on topics overly sensitive to Mercosur countries, for instance government procurement, and that presents potential sustainability issues (Kehoe et al., 2020). The final stretch of negotiations started in 2014 and coincided with the end of the ‘commodity boom’¹³ and the election of ‘liberal-conservative governments in Argentina and Brazil in 2015’, when there was a return to a neoliberal ‘strategy of external openness’ (Sanahuja & Rodríguez, 2019, p. 5, own translation), and a consequent ‘de-politicization’ of Mercosur. A preliminary trade agreement was reached in 2019. The text of the agreement, nonetheless, still needs to be ratified in the parliaments of the member countries of both blocs before it is implemented (Malamud, 2022).

Materials and Methods

To test the hypothesis, I analyzed Mercosur’s organizational structure to identify spaces where participation occurred. After performing document analysis of data from four Mercosur bodies and identifying relevant CS representatives, I then started to conduct participant interviews of actors belonging to some of the organizations identified, as well as former government officials involved in engaging civil society. The four bodies I focused on were the most frequently mentioned in the literature and in interviews, and I contacted interviewees via e-mail when contact information was made public in participant lists, or via virtual snowballing.

Document analysis of Mercosur’s online archives was conducted between December 2022 and March 2023, examining approximately 400 documents including meeting acts and recommendations.¹⁴ The analysis focused on four Mercosur bodies: FCES; REAF; SGT-06;¹⁵ and SGT-10.¹⁶ While documents span from 1994 to 2022, particular attention was given to those produced after 2003. Participant interviews were carried out between December 2022 and February 2023, addressing key issues in MoP studies. These issues included CS interactions with government authorities, transparency in negotiations, and available resources for CS engagement. The objective of interviews was to corroborate document analysis and to explore how Mercosur and the Brazilian government implemented their rhetoric on CS engagement; and the impact of the engagement on trade policy-making, including on EUAA negotiations. Due to feasibility and relevance, interviews targeted solely Brazilian CS representatives and former government officials. I also accounted for possible participatory spaces created by CS outside of Mercosur for engaging with the negotiations. Finally, I accounted for participatory spaces established by the Brazilian government for engaging with CS in trade negotiations, but that existed outside Mercosur’s organizational structure (Figure 1). I will proceed to discuss the results in light of the MoP framework and explore the implications of the findings below.

Figure 1. Modes of participation investigated in EUAA negotiations, organized into ‘three categories across a continuum marking autonomy from’ Mercosur (Gerard, 2014, p. 44). Elaborated by the author, based on Gerard.

Results

CS engagement by Mercosur and the Brazilian government in trade policy-making varied significantly over the years analyzed, both quantitatively and qualitatively. This variation was particularly notable in the context of EUAA negotiations. The dynamics of Brazilian presidential politics directly influenced the engagement of Brazilian CS by the government and Mercosur. For instance, between 2003 and 2014 – PT presidencies – CS representatives reported the highest levels of engagement (Interview, 14 December 2022).

Proximity to Officials and Transparency in Negotiations

During PT governments, a follow-up mechanism for negotiations with Europe known as SENEUROPA was created by the Brazilian government.¹⁷ This mechanism was responsible for producing reports of the negotiations which were later distributed to CS representatives (Veiga, 2007), and for setting up meetings between officials and CS prior to negotiation rounds. SENEUROPA provided CS with an informal alternative to Mercosur, as a means to try to influence regional trade policy-making at a national arena (Armijo and Kearney, 2008). CS representatives could, most of the time, make the reports public and further disseminate information on negotiations. Yet, in some negotiating rounds Brazilian officials demanded that CS representatives maintain the privacy of the reports (Interview, 24 January 2023). SENEUROPA was set up primarily as an attempt to legitimize negotiations, while the more impactful conversations were held in inter-ministerial meetings without the presence of CS (Veiga, 2007). The same author characterizes SENEUROPA as ‘political’ and distinct from the more technical inter-ministerial meetings.

Botto and Bianculli (2011) note that ‘the negotiation structure did not include a formal and institutionalized space for the inclusion of business and civil society actors’ (p. 100), although they observe that the participation of business actors was incentivized by government officials. In the same line, there were no guarantees that societal demands or reservations made at SENEUROPA talks would be raised at the negotiation table by the official Brazilian negotiating delegation. It should be also noted that, at SENEUROPA talks, ‘the final position was always drawn up by officials from the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ (Interview, 24 January 2023). Reports were the only source of information on what was happening inside negotiation rooms. The ‘negotiation room’ concept is crucial for understanding CS engagement in EUAA negotiations. As noted in interviews, representatives were not allowed in the rooms and were confined to ‘the room next door’. These restrictions reportedly originated from European delegation officials who ‘feared it would prompt similiar demands for CS presence from EU countries’. During a Brussels negotiating round, CS representatives were even ‘placed in a hallway outside the negotiation room’. After each round, ‘reports of the discussions were provided’ to the representatives. However, ‘this engagement was only observed until 2004’ (Ibid.), when negotiations stalled, resulting in a prolonged hiatus. SENEUROPA, as an informal channel created by Brazilian government elites, served for its duration as a site for regulated contestation, where CS representatives were not allowed to propose new agendas or effectively challenge the EUAA. CS was not on equal footing when engaging with ministerial officials, and a lack of preparation and beforehand access to data on negotiations might have also kept representatives from raising more feasible or technical objections to the agreement. As an interviewee questions,

How can organizations arrive at a negotiation with a super well-prepared chancellery having little notion of ramifications and with two weeks to prepare [for talks]? Even organizations inside the FCES, national economic and labour elites [, are unequipped for negotiations] (Interview, Dec 14 2022).

In the four years leading up to the agreement on trade, interviewees noted increased limitations in the elites’ engagement of CS. During the government of Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro – from 2019 to 2022 – , for example, reports on the negotiating rounds were now only available upon request. Moreover, dialogue between Brazilian official negotiating delegations and CS, in particular movements and unions, ‘no longer took place’. The informality of the Bolsonaro government’s engagement of non-business CS is reinforced by the effective ‘end of SENEUROPA talks’. The ‘organicity of the relationship between civil society and government officials’ disappeared, in part due to social movements and unions’ ‘formal rupture’ with the government (Interview, 24 January 2023). This rupture took place after the polarizing impeachment of president Dilma Rousseff (PT) in 2016. A majority of social movements and trade unions in Brazil adopted a position of repudiation and opposition to the subsequent government of Michel Temer. This posture deepened towards the Bolsonaro government. Mercosur and EUAA negotiations, in turn, lost relevance for movements, that instead started directing their efforts and resources to domestic issues. That was aggravated by the consequent disarticulation of social movement networks, given the plurality of domestic problems with which the movements had to deal in Brazil amid political and economic crises.

At the time between the 2014 Brazilian economic downturn and Rousseff’s impeachment, ‘labour and civil society organizations’ agenda focused on domestic issues, i.e., labour reform and the impact on salaries, employment, and working conditions, as well as on democracy, respectively’ (Bianculli, 2020, p. 257). Meanwhile, the Brazilian government’s preference for a more superficial and de-politicized Mercosur was a manifestation of a neoliberal (re)turn in post-Rousseff governments. This de-politicization was also a repudiation of the social and participatory turn in Mercosur. The bloc now more than ever returned to being a market-building mechanism, where political participation and contestation are contained (Jayasuriya & Rodan, 2007). With the EUAA no longer a mobilizing topic for Brazilian civil society (Interview, 11 January 2023), negotiations moved on largely uncontested and uninterrupted. The lack of CS engagement was also due in part to a lack of societal access to the content of the agreement. While the content of the trade pillar first became public only due to a leak by Greenpeace Germany on 8 October 2020, the content of the ‘political dialogue’ pillar remains unknown to the public to date. The only source of information available on the content of the political dialogue pillar was found in a report commissioned by the European Parliament (Malamud, 2022). The document also highlights the limits of access of CS to the content of the negotiations, particularly for South Americans.

Regardless of the ‘multi-pillar’ character of the agreement, the argument for the EUAA being something much more than a free trade agreement has become less convincing as decades of negotiation went by. This shift in perception has been particularly stark for Brazilian CS as limitations became clearer. The agreement went from being perceived as ‘the reverse image of the FTAA’ and ‘an effort in interregional cooperation’ to, by the end of negotiations, having ‘turned out to be the same as the FTAA’. This turnaround coincided with the perception that the EUAA would serve to ‘legitimize the Bolsonaro administration’, as it would represent a significant achievement in diplomacy (Interview, 10 February 2023). By the time civil society effectively mobilized against the EUAA, however, negotiations for a trade agreement had already come to a close, and a preliminary understating on trade, pending ratification, had been drafted. Frustration with the limitations within existing sites for participation, both intra- and extra-Mercosur, led civil society to create its own spaces in which they can express their unregulated dissent and, ultimately, attempt to stop the signature of the agreement.

Participation in Mercosur Bodies: REAF; SGTs 06 and 10; and FCES

Document analysis of meetings minutes demonstrates an absence of any recorded opposition to AA negotiations. Documents collected from Mercosur’s digital archives from meetings of REAF; SGTs 06 and 10 – previously 11 – ; and FCES have allowed me to reach this conclusion. I could only find passing mentions of the AA negotiations, and these mentions were mostly temporally concentrated in the moments of imminence of reaching an agreement, for instance in 2004 or between 2017 and 2019.

Participants in meetings of those 4 bodies refrained from expressing opposition to the EUAA. Even when references to negotiations were made in meeting minutes, they tended to: express enthusiasm for governmental engagement in negotiations (31st REAF, February 2019); report on negotiation developments, without details (64th SGT 06 Ordinary Meeting, February 2017); or only express limited reservations. It may be tempting to interpret reservations as representatives openly recording their opposition during meetings. However, these reservations never amounted to direct opposition to the agreement itself: they were primarily technical positions, such as repeated demands from the FCES for the establishment of a commission to oversee agreement implementation (61st FCES Plenary Meeting, December 2015; Interview, 14 December 2022). In line with existing literature on participation in Mercosur (Veiga, 2007) and with MoP literature at large, it became evident that only positions aligning with the free trade agenda were allowed to be recorded within Mercosur bodies. Dissenting opinions that challenged this agenda were not recorded in meeting minutes, even if expressed by some of the same actors outside of Mercosur channels. This was the case with the Federation of Bodies for Educational and Social Assistance (FASE), a Brazilian social movement network present at one point in FCES meetings and that also later signed a collective statement condemning the EUAA.

As the FCES claimed for itself the role of official representative body for CS in Mercosur, limitations to participation in the FCES is of particular concern (ALOP, 2010). And these limitations go beyond the usual criticism of the FCES being ‘literally consultive’ (Interview, 14 December 2022), meaning the body does not allow for effective challenges to Mercosur agenda. The limitations for participation in the FCES can be traced back to the process of selecting participants. The selection of participants in the FCES plenary, comprised exclusively of non-state actors, goes through national sections in each member country. However, it was not possible to detect binding regulations determining the functioning of these sections or explaining the guiding parameters to qualify who can or cannot be represented in the FCES. This led me to conclude that the selection process could be prone to subjectiveness. In other words, like other informal mechanisms for government interlocution with CS, it could be left ‘at the mercy of all sorts of inter-bureaucratic friction and even idiosyncrasies of a personal or ideological nature’ (Veiga, 2007, p. 162). Alemany (2017) has also criticized the national sections for their informal and subjective criteria, while Mace (2021) adds to the limited representativeness of the selection process in national sections (p. 712).

A final point to note regarding participation in the FCES is that no funds are allocated for it. Participation is solely financed by the civil society organizations themselves, which significantly limits who can participate. This lack of financial support was one of the factors that led some social movement organizations and networks to declare that ‘participation in the FCES is closed beyond trade unions and business coalitions’ (Interview, 14 December 2022). This shortcoming has even been acknowledged in a report by Mercosur (MERCOSUR, 2015). An aggravating issue is that FCES plenary meetings, with rare exceptions, are held physically in the country exercising the pro tempore (rotating) presidency of Mercosur at the time. This position rotates every six months. Since the FCES plenary meets up to 4 times a year, it becomes obvious that the lack of funding makes it unsustainable for social movements with fewer resources to be present at all or even most plenary meetings.

It is of particular interest to observe the absence of opposition emanating from the 4 Mercosur bodies analyzed, as their areas of concern – environment, labour, and family farming – are the ones now deemed the issues most at risk of deterioration if the EUAA is ratified. I believe this is another point in favour of the argument that contestation in Mercosur bodies, in particular as free trade is concerned, has been highly regulated. Bianculli (2020) notes that within Mercosur, even while it moved ‘away from the neoliberal creed of the 1990s […], negotiations with the EU were not openly contested’ (p. 262). Furthermore, ‘confrontational strategies were more strongly used after the launch of the FTAA and were practically negligible in the context of trade negotiations with the EU’ (p. 256). That was the case even though the AA shares many features with the failed FTAA, as ‘both rest, very centrally, on discourses of economic liberalization’ (Grugel, 2004, p. 620, own emphasis). I argue that only a politicized and mobilizing external ‘threat’ such as the FTAA would amalgamate conflicting interests, FTAA negotiations being the occasion where diverse social movement interests came together to create REBRIP (Tussie, 2013).

Social Summits and the Participative Mercosur

The Mercosur Social Summits were official events held parallel to the summits of Mercosur heads of state in the country that would hold the pro tempore presidency of the bloc at the time. At the end of each social summit, which had broad participation from various CS sectors – but most notably social movement organizations – , position statements were drafted. It is in the text of these statements that I found positions more critical of EUAA negotiations. Contentious positions ranged from demanding more transparency and balance in the negotiations¹⁸ to even demanding an end to negotiations and a non-signing of the agreement altogether¹⁹ (MERCOSUR, 2016). The change in tone to a direct condemnation of the agreement at the end of a summit in 2015 is mostly likely a reflection of the early signs that EUAA negotiations were slowly picking up pace again at the time. Nonetheless, I argue the Summits must also be seen within the context of elites regulating social conflict. The exclusion of groups deemed too contentious for participation in the FCES has already been indicated by Grugel (2006). The Social Summits, in turn, have even been dismissed by Mace (2021) as not being a space ‘where the real negotiation occurs’ (p. 715). It seems thus fair to argue that funding participation in the Summits rather than in the FCES – which, as noted above, is not funded – would be a way for elites to steer potentially contentious voices towards less influential sites. Organizations less favourable to the Mercosur agenda could be funded for participation at the Summits instead of ‘in committees and working subgroups’, where CS could potentially influence policy-making (Mace, 2021, p. 715). Mace has taken a critical stance on the relevance of the Summits and, based on participant interviews, concludes that the Social Summits.

appear to have been put in place as a way to prevent the establishment of counter-summits […] This illustrates the instrumental role of the social summits in the eyes of Mercosur’s member governments: their main function being to involve [civil society organizations] in discussions concerning Mercosur affairs while excluding them from the decision-making process (Ibid., pp. 717, own emphasis).

There is also no regulatory provision assuring that the declarations emanating from the Social Summits must be adopted or even recognized by the decision-making bodies of Mercosur, as for instance the Common Market Group. The lack of such provision raises questions about the efficiency and importance of declarations made at the Summits. In line with this criticism, one interviewee stated that ‘no decisions that matter emanate from the Social Summits’, and that decisions ‘promote nothing feasible’, in particular where more technical issues – for example, the creation of a common external tariff – are concerned (Interview, 14 December 2022).

Outside the Mercosur structure, the General Secretariat of the Presidency represents the most relevant body for the Brazilian government’s engagement with social movement organizations. During PT governments, it was the body responsible for the Social and Participative Mercosur Programme (PMSP). At first glance, PMSP would promote inclusion and democratize decision-making processes in Mercosur, by organizing and funding participation in the Summits and bringing CS and government officials in charge of trade policy together. The rhetoric used by government elites to describe the PMSP certainly reinforces this impression (Doctor, 2007). The PMSP reportedly provided ‘public financing to civil society networks for participation in key [Mercosur] moments’ (Interview, 10 February 2023). However, there is no regulation to decide who will be invited by the General Secretariat to participate (Veiga, 2007). Once again, informality leads to the possible conclusion that participant selection – and in the case of the PMSP, also funding – could depend on subjective issues including proximity to the government or affinity with the current trade agenda. Finally, authors noted that in discussions conducted in the scope of the PMSP (and, consequentially, the social summits) the ability to set the agenda is centralized by the government and not up for contestation (Mesquita & Belém Lopes, 2018). Regulated contestation in summits and how that connects to participation in more ‘serious’ bodies like the FCES illustrates a narrative where social movements are potentially co-opted into official summitry as a means of preventing protests, that could escalate. Meanwhile, these social movements are also steered away from sites where their participation could be more impactful, such as FCES and SGTs.

Created Spaces in EUAA Negotiations

There were no documented positions contrary to the continuation of AA negotiations found in the analysis of meeting minutes from four Mercosur bodies. The only positions contrary to the agreement were detected either in official channels located outside the organizational structure of Mercosur, such as the Social Summits, or in spaces created by civil society autonomously to the bloc, such as the Brazilian Front Against the Mercosur-EU Agreement (Frente). The Frente represents the common stance taken by a large number of social movement organizations in direct opposition to the signing of the agreement. It is highly informal and does not adhere to Mercosur’s internal functional logic. 120 Brazilian civil society organizations signed the manifesto, published on the website Bilaterals.org on 9 December 2020. REBRIP and FASE were among the signatories. Environmental civil society groups reportedly ‘pulled civil society, after the agreement’, into creating the Frente (Interview, 11 January 2023).

A second created space I detected while conducting interviews was the lobbying done by CS representatives to parliamentarians in the Brazilian Congress in order to try and prevent the ratification of the agreement (Interview, 24 January 2023). This strategy was seen by social movement organizations and trade unions as necessary, especially during the last years before the 2019 agreement, under the Temer and Bolsonaro administrations. Yet, literature has already noted the low levels of engagement of the Brazilian parliament concerning Mercosur, sometimes bordering on a lack of interest (Gardini, 2010). This might indicate the limited efficacy of the lobbying strategy. Meanwhile, members of the European Parliament’s (MEPs) engagement of Brazilian CS has also been indicated in passing during interviews. It can be presumed that talks with MEPs on the left have the purpose of coordinating efforts in stopping the ratification of the agreement.

Concluding Discussion: A Legacy of Informal Participation

By utilizing MoP and document analysis, I was able not only to critically interpret the archival data from meetings but also corroborate the data with participant interviews. This approach enabled me to delve into the underlying implications and uncover subtle indications of regulation, even in cases where reservations regarding trade negotiations are officially recorded. For instance, when an interviewee praises a particular mechanism for its inclusivity, MoP analysis prompts me to consider how this representative was chosen, by whom, and who may have been excluded from participating. Consequently, I was able to critically engage with the findings in a more comprehensive manner compared to previous studies on the relationship between civil society and trade within the Mercosur context. The outset of a ‘second pink tide’ in Latin American politics, with the 2022 re-election of Lula as its most symbolic outcome, presents an ideal opportunity to return to the debate on the role of civil society in market-driven regionalism.

On Lula’s first two terms, Hochstetler (2008) argued that its modus operandi ‘included two essential priorities: a substantive commitment to pursue redistributive policies that favour the poor over the wealthy, and a procedural commitment to incorporating popular participation in decision making’ (p. 36). As regards trade policy-making, these promises fell short in light of MoP analysis. The influence of CS representatives in AA negotiations was highly restricted even during PT administrations, when there was relatively more engagement with social movements and unions. Besides having to contend with a government that still actively pursued the expansion of free trade, CS also faced the intrinsic limitations found in interpresidential regionalism. The Worker’s Party (PT) legacy of what I call ‘proximity without institutionalization’ meant that participation was only assured when CS had affinity to the government in power. From 2016 onwards, when the Brazilian right was back in power, agribusiness was prioritized, and the previously available channels for CS engagement were either dissolved or abandoned. The overwhelming influence of agribusiness throughout negotiations, meanwhile, can be attributed to the ‘deindustrialization’ (Vigevani & Ramanzini Junior, 2022) process the Brazilian economy is undergoing since the start of the early-2000s commodity boom.

It is important to point out that, however limited, the changes promoted during the social and participatory turn in Mercosur were nevertheless meaningful. These changes promoted the participation of actors who for a long time had been excluded from policy-making, at the regional or national levels. Mechanisms such as the PMSP engaged smaller social movements and provided them for the first time the exciting ‘possibility of discussing trade and regional integration at a technical level’. These discussions were often directly with government officials, such as then ‘Minister for Foreign Affairs Celso Amorim’ (Interview, 10 February 2023). As a concluding caveat, I note that this article focused on the portions of Brazilian organized CS the most active in Mercosur, and in particular in and around EUAA negotiations. In other words, this article ‘has focused on organized civil society, but [civil society organizations’] relations with unorganized citizens are also highly relevant for assessing their impact on’ regional governance (Hochstetler, 2008, p. 52, emphasis in text). It would be interesting to see future research focusing on the more unstructured aspects of the civil society–trade dyad in Mercosur.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the editors and blind reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions. I would also like to thank the interviewees for agreeing to have their insights shared under the condition of anonymity.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported in part by a grant from Oskar Öflunds Stiftelse.

Notes

1 Mercosur is a regional organization in the Southern Cone of Latin America, and its current member states are Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay.

2 The definition of ‘civil society’ remains notoriously controversial. I follow the definition proposed by Alemany (2017) when analysing participatory mechanisms in Mercosur (p. 157). It includes not only social movement organizations and trade unions, but also business associations, among others. The first two are the focus of this article, but I also mention the role of business in passing.

3 Post-hegemonic regionalism refers to the changes in regional integration arising with a shift in how Latin American regional leadership sees economic development. Presumably, to now focus more on societal participation and socioeconomic development (Riggirozzi & Tussie, 2012).

4 The ‘Buenos Aires consensus’ represents a common position taken by the left-leaning presidencies of Lula (Brazil) and Néstor Kirchner (Argentina), as a sort of anti-hegemonic alternative to the ‘Washington Consensus.’

5 The prevailing post-Cold War neoliberal thinking, the ‘Washington Consensus’ implies accepting ‘the superiority of free markets over state-run economies and the necessity and inevitability of integration with the neoliberal global economy’ (Chodor, 2015, p. 56). It struggled to garner support among Latin American citizens, but was avidly pursued by many of its governments in the 1990s.

6 ‘Interpresidentialism’ emphasises the role of the presidencies of respective member states in Latin American regionalism. In this perspective, elites which domestically concentrate power over policy-making would be unwilling to delegate to a supra-national organization. They opt instead to coordinate regional integration via ‘presidential diplomacy’ (Malamud, 2022) or inter-ministerial engagement at the highest levels. This is the case for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

7 The transition period comprises changes implemented between the signing of the Asunción Treaty and the adoption of the Ouro Preto Protocol. The 1991 Asunción Treaty started Mercosur, while the 1994 Ouro Preto Protocol gave it international legal personality and established the bloc’s organisational structure.

8 Labour Relations, Employment, and Social Security.

9 The Brazilian economic crisis of 1998, caused in part by the 1997 Asian financial crisis, triggered a significant devaluation of the Brazilian currency. The previous decision to float its currency against the US dollar, which contributed to the devaluation, caused the crisis to spill over to Argentina. Brazil had deep economic ties with its neighbour, and these ties were made stronger and more numerous because of Mercosur.

10 The ‘pink tide’ refers to the centre-left and leftist character of South American leaders elected almost simultaneously at the period. As red is the colour often associated with socialism or communism in the region, ‘pink’ would likely imply in a softer version of commitment to socialist principles such as equality.

11 Specialized Meeting for Family Agriculture, created in 2004.

12 Unasur was comprised of all 12 South American nations, but by 2019 six member states had suspended their participation, including Brazil. This was in part due to an electoral shift towards right-wing presidencies in the region, which condemned the politicisation of Unasur and the membership of Venezuela.

13 The so-called commodity boom of the 2000s was the increase in value of primary exports – in the case of Brazil, soya and iron ore in particular – , driven primarily by the rapid economic growth of China.

14 Available at the online Mercosur database (https://documentos.mercosur.int).

15 Environment.

16 SGT 11 became SGT 10 at the end of Mercosur’s transition period. This did not translate into a change in agenda.

17 National secretariat for EUAA negotiations, similar to a mechanism created during the FTAA (ALCA) negotiations, SENALCA.

18 Final declaration, Mercosur Social Summit, Brasilia, 2012.

19 Final declaration, XVIII Mercosur Social Summit, Brasilia, 2015.