EUROPE AND LATIN AMERICA : AMBIGUOUS PAST, TROUBLED PRESENT, UNCERTAIN FUTURE

Abstract

Statesmen, representatives of public and business circles of European and Latin American countries, interested in a real rapprochement between the two macro-regions in the direction of forming a space of close trade, economic, political and humanitarian cooperation, are intensely peering into the contradictory present and unknown future, trying to understand the reasons for the stalling of the Euro-Latin American project, which was relatively promising some time ago. In the relations between Europe (primarily the European Union) and Latin America, the idea of a “common future“ lived for several decades. But so far, the partners, despite their best efforts, have not been able to draw clear contours of it, and on a number of key issues serious differences have emerged that make it difficult to make agreed (satisfying both sides) decisions. On the eve of the third decade of the XXI century, it seemed that there was a chance to make another attempt to intensify and fill with concrete content the Euro-Latin American interaction, but the negative effects of the coronacrisis, and then the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, mixed all political and economic cards, weakened the already established ties, accentuated differences, and set new tasks of an existential scale for Latin America and a united Europe.