The European Audiovisual Policy Goes Abroad: The Case of Inter-regional Cooperation with Mercosur

Since the 1990s, new actors and processes are becoming part of the international scenario. This new situation, together with globalization, has stressed the role of regional entities, while the relevance of the nation state as an individual actor has diminished. The emergence of regionalism on a global scale has introduced new forms of intergovernmental cooperation (Manners, 2008). In this scenario, the EU is the leading actor in regional integration pro-cesses. The EU has been promoting this regional perspective for shifting the global balance of power. As a result, other integration processes, such as the Southern Common Market (Mercosur), the Andean community and the African Union, have mirrored the EU regional project (Brozel & Risse, 2009).