Exploring limitations of new regionalism in the EU policies: A Latin-American perspective

Abstract

From a Latin Americans viewpoint -where the European Union (EU) is a reference point as a transnational integration- it is remarked at first the incapacity to revert regional asymmetries so as to build a Europe for all the regions as shown by dominant neoliberal and neoregionalist agendas involved in the EUs institutional building up. To explain that, we highlight the limitations of the regionalist perspective that had nurtured the EUs institutions and territorial policies that were both centrally founded in the belief that regions/localities were self-reproductive containers working in an unidirectional global local relationship, and in the inconsideration of asymmetric dynamics promoted from the neoliberal strategies at a national and supranational level. Trying to overcome those limitations and to formulate a strategy of alternate regional development, we stand out the need for inserting the regions in a more realistic and integrating macro-meso relationships, in which the role of the national State and the national paths and models are computed.

Í