Is There Any Room for Input and Control Legitimacy by Civil Society in Mercosur?

The Mercosur 1995–2000 Action Program (Decision No. 09/95 of the Mercosur Common Market Council (CMC)) stated that the strengthening of the integration process required more intensive participation on the part of society. The guidelines based on that Action Program were elaborated by the Mercosur Relaunching Project (2000) and the Institutional Strengthening Project (2001). Interestingly, in this context of reform, it was only in 2003, in the 2004–2006 Mercosur Work Program , that for the first time the participation of ‘civil society’ was mentioned. Along with the Institutional Strengthening Project, with the support of the Inter-American Bank, the Mercosur Secretariat launched regional bids, hiring experts to analyze ‘Democratic Governance’ in the bloc’s institutions in June 2005. One of the bids was for the issue of ‘Civil society and subnational entities participation in Mercosur’ (SM/BID/04/05 and SM/BID/05/05). Until then, different terminologies had been applied to designate non-state actors’ participation in Mercosur (as will be elaborated below). This chapter addresses the question of what can be considered as ‘civil society’ in Mercosur, and also, what role is ‘civil society’ assigned in the bloc