EU-Brazil Relations

Many governments are finding it difficult to finance the growing demand for essential infrastructure through public funding alone. With the significant increase of debt in many countries while needs for essential infrastructure continue to expand, private-sector involvement has increasingly been viewed as a potential solution to closing the infrastructure financing gap and ensuring the efficient delivery and operation of infrastructure services. Still, private-sector investment in infrastructure, particularly in developing countries, remains low owing to a variety of real and perceived challenges. This insight report is the culmination of a multi-year collaboration between the Inter-American Development Bank and the World Economic Forum Global Future Council on Long-Term Investing, Infrastructure and Development 2016-2018. It presents recommendations that incorporate public and private sector input on how to tackle the key challenges in Brazil’s infrastructure market. The goal is to enhance trust between the public and private sectors, so that they may jointly mobilize more domestic and international financing to meet Brazil’s long-term infrastructure needs and increase the participation of long-term investors in Brazil’s infrastructure market. The recommendations in this report build on those in the World Economic Forum report on Risk Mitigation Instruments in Infrastructure – Gap Assessment (2016), and this body of work has provided valuable insights to the Forum’s National Infrastructure Acceleration Initiative. The recommendations herein were developed through the conduct of interviews with working group members from the private sector and were endorsed by selected policy-makers.

This study analyses the current picture and prospects for EU–Brazil relations in the political and security arenas. As actors experiencing relevant changes, albeit in different directions in their respective international status quo, the EU and Brazil have found some common ground for convergence at the macro level on some structural issues, such as the normative framework of a changing global order, the striving for a multipolar world and the relevance and desirability of multilateralism. At the same time, it is argued that they differ significantly as to the strategies pursued in the attainment of those shared interests, resulting in competing, or eventually divergent, policy preferences when addressing specific issues and developments at the international level, limiting the prospects for a deep mutual commitment and engagement in political and security dynamics at the global level.