A política externa brasileira entre o comércio e a sustentabilidade : as negociações do Acordo Mercosul-União Europeia

Abstract

This study analyzes the relationship between Brazilian Foreign Policy, agribusiness, and the negotiations of the Mercosur-European Union Association Agreement, with a focus on the environmental conditionalities required by the European bloc. Drawing on Putnam's (1988) two-level games model, it is argued that agribusiness, as the primary constituent at the domestic level, selectively supports the commercial gains of the agreement while systematically resisting its environmental obligations, thereby configuring voluntary defection and constraining the Brazilian win-set in the environmental dimension. Through a qualitative approach and bibliographic review, the paper reconstructs the trajectory of the negotiations from 1995 to 2026, articulates the theoretical framework with the contributions of Lima (2000) and Milani and Pinheiro (2013), and empirically demonstrates how agribusiness acts to undermine domestic environmental legislation and frame European demands as disguised protectionism. It is concluded that the tension between internationally assumed environmental commitments and their domestic resistance is structural, reflecting an incentive configuration in which dominant actors gain more from environmental flexibility than from compliance with agreements.