>Between 1999 and 2006 there have been four Summits held among the heads of state and government of the countries of the European Union and Latin America and the Caribbean，and a “strategic partnership” has been established and developed，which is only a reflection of the unique form of a far more complicated network of relationships between the two large regions. Europe-Latin America relations，which are duly dubbed “dialogues”，constitute first of all one alternative for the emergence of a new international order，based on international law and institutions，as well as part of the game of geopolitics and geo-economics，based on the balance of power and the strategic competition. The dialogues between Europe and Latin America thus have served to illustrate resistance to the dangers of U.S. unilateral exercise of power，while remaining one side of the triangular transatlantic relationship，in which the U.S. is the most important partner for both of them. The main basis of the European-Latin American partnership is political dialogue and cooperation. Similar political traditions and practice as well as close historical links，cultural affinities and common values have been cited as the basic underpinning for the commitment to their inter-regional relations，and both regions share a vision of integration as an answer to global change based on interests as well as values. A procedural component of a highly institutionalized process has been exercised in the political dialogue on which EU’s projection of power relies and by which adjustments of common positions in Latin America are conditioned. The dialogue between Europe and Latin America is thus a tool to spread enduring procedures to build up a multilateral order with functioning international institutions. In the past years economic factors have become increasingly significant since for most of Latin American countries the single most important policy determinant has been the pursuit of reinsertion into the global economy after their “lost decade” during the 1980s. The partnership sticks to a very general principle in the sense of promoting a multilateral rule-based economic and financial international order. Nevertheless，when it comes down to concrete matters，because of its agricultural interests the EU has faced the most severe obstacles in its relations with Latin America. The restrictions on Latin American exports，both to the EU and worldwide，by the EU’s Common Agricultural policy are well known and have thus far limited its capacity to develop a truly inter-regional association. It is to a great extent that the building-up and strengthening of the relationship have not depended upon the application of policy between the two regions but upon the internal developments within each region which have had little direct connection to the other. This has been revealed by the history of Europe-Latin America dialogues，as in the case of EU’s involvement in Central America Peace Process in the 1980s as a consequence of the stalled and then reactivated integration in Europe，or in the formation of an identifiable form of inter-regionalism during the 1990s following the creation of the single market in Europe and the massive structural adjustments in Latin America，or even in the stagnation of the Europe-Latin America relations since the start of the new century due to the lack of an internal foreign policy consensus in both regions.