Observatorio de Cooperación Descentralizada | Unión Europea | America Latina

Data available allows us as Observatory to offer a first statistics approach to EU-LA Decentralised Cooperation

Decentralised Cooperation is a dynamic phenomenon that is becoming more and more important in internacional relations. From an economic perspective, for instance, only in Spain it i highly contributes to ODA.

442,8 million of net ODA coming from local and regional governments in Spain in 2006
Source: PACI 2006 follow-up preview

A part of this cooperation is done through relations between European and Latinamerican local and regional governments and many of them are now in EU-LA partnerships.

2.193 local and regional governments involved
Source: OCD

Participation is unequally distributed among different EU and LA countries, but it can be said that most of them are involved. This distribution is shown in the bilateral relations analysis per countries.

The origin of relations responds to different circumstances, sometimes interlinked. A first reason is obviously historical relations between countries, that can be of a colonial nature...

... or be fruit of migration waves EU-LA, in one direction and the other.

Many links have been built around a cooperation will of European sub-national governments both to support political movements in Latin America and to fight against poverty.

Last but not least, other reasons such as urban marketing, corporate strategies of transnational companies and its local impact, the need to project and economically develop the territory, or cities alliances to lobby at a world scale, could also explain new decentralised cooperation relations.

This way Decentralised Cooperation is spreading and involving more and more cities and regions.