MERCOSUR

Mercosur (Mercado Común del Sur, 'Southern Common Market') was founded by the 1991 Treaty of Asunción between Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay, aiming to build a full common market with free movement of goods, services, capital, and labor, modeled loosely on the European Community. In practice it has functioned mainly as an imperfect customs union: a common external tariff applies to most goods traded with non-members, but internal trade has repeatedly been disrupted by member states' own protectionist measures during economic crises, and the bloc has never achieved the deeper free-movement integration its founding treaty envisioned. Membership has been more politically contested than most trade blocs: Venezuela joined as a full member in 2012 after a years-long accession process, but was suspended in December 2016 for failing to adopt Mercosur's required trade and human-rights protocols amid Venezuela's own deepening political crisis, and remains suspended. Bolivia, a longtime associate member, completed the process to become a full member in 2024. Mercosur's most consequential unfinished business is its trade agreement with the European Union, first negotiated in principle in 2019 after two decades of talks and still not fully ratified by all EU member states as of the mid-2020s, held up chiefly by European farmers' objections to competition from South American agricultural exports.

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