Mikhail Mukhametdinov

Through suspension of Paraguayan membership in 2012–2013 and Venezuelan membership since 2016 MERCOSUR has shown itself as an actor capable of influencing domestic politics in its member states.

peculiar feature of the MERCOSUR process is that over half of its legislation is not enforced.

propose to define regional integration primarily as intentional harmonization of national policies among several countries as pursued by a common regional authority. Such understanding of integration automatically brings forward the necessity to consider the specific areas where integration (or policy harmonization) is taking place, thus highlighting the dimension-specific and issue-specific character of the process across various temporal and spatial examples of regionalism

MERCOSUR unites former colonies, which were and remain dependent on trade with former colonial powers and on acquisition of capital and technology from rich countries. Regional integration in MERCOSUR is unable either to substitute this historical North–South relationship, nor to significantly reduce the dependence of its members on better-developed partners. The EU, on the contrary, is a group of predominantly rich and self-sufficient countries. MERCOSUR is also a more recent process. It was founded in 1991 while the EEC has operated since 1957.

states, five versus 28 in the EU. MERCOSUR’s basic indicators differ substantially from those of the EU correlating from 1:1.8 (population) to 2.9:1 (territory), 1:4.4 (GRP), and 1:2.5 (GRP per capita). 7
The degree of commercial interdependence within the EU is 10 to 15 times that of MERCOSUR

the EU is an organization with various supranational competences compared with the strictly intergovernmental structure of MERCOSUR.

The EU exercises supranational authority in many economic, environmental, juridical, and security spheres.

Supranational institutions in the EU are believed to pursue interests of the bloc as a whole, and at times they are able to enforce decisions contrary to the will of individual states

MERCOSUR intergovernmental system is restricted to advancing only those measures

of integration that have been agreed upon by all member states.