B&R Sets a New Model for South America Integration
Dr. Evandro Menezes de Carvalho, professor of International Law at Getulio Vargas Foundation School of Law in Rio de Janeiro, and professor of International Law at Fluminense Federal University School of Law, Brazil
The Belt and Road Initiative has adopted a pragmatic cooperation approach that could act as an example to other regions of the world, notably Latin America. The regional integration schemes planned for this continent in the 1990s followed the European integration model. They were initially based on a legal and institutional structure constituted with no concrete projects through which to integrate the flows of goods, services, and people via a transportation, energy, and communications infrastructure. The Belt and Road Initiative inverts the process by first building the infrastructure and then, at some point in the future, planning a more sophisticated institutional and legal structure that meets the demands of the integration process.