Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa has proposed an Organisation of Latin American States on his visit to Mexico, El País reports.

The idea is old, very old. Ever since their independence, Latin American states have tried to associate themselves into integration projects of all varieties. The result of it is a veritable spaghetti bowl of partially overlapping regional and sub-regional agreements, none of which seem to work properly: the weakened Andean Community, a MERCOSUR ridden with internal splits, the idea to merge the former two into a Union of South American Nations, Chávez’s Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), CARICOM etc. - you name it. A lot of the time, these integration initiative never seem to get much further than signing a treaty declaring their existence.

The problem seems to be that these great plans are generally not very well thought out and too ambitious. Frequently inspired by the example of the EU, what is forgotten is that Europe is unique and it is not easy to recreate its success. What is ignored is that in Europe, integration initially served as an economic solution to a political problem: that of preventing future war and preventing German nationalism to rise again. In Latin America, regional integration is now being heralded as a political solution to economic problems. Latin America is not like Europe.

The levels of inequality among the Latin American nations are larger than those of Europe were at the time of founding of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), first forerunner of what is today the European Union. It is incredibly difficult to bring together states as different as Ecuador and Mexico under one institutional “umbrella”.

Additionally, Europe had a very different structure than Latin America, particularly in terms of trade. While European countries have traditionally traded mainly amongst each other, Latin American states’ most important trade partners tend to lie outside Latin America itself. Mexico and many other Latin American countries trade mainly with the US, MERCOSUR with the EU, and Asia is becoming more and more important. While it could be argued that integration would facilitate intra-regional trade, the current lack of benefits is a huge impediment to establishing it in the first place.

Why, then, establish another regional integration project? A good question. The sensible thing to do would be to disentangle the current mess. Either focus on those organisations that already exist, or do away with them all and start from a clean slate. The latter is going to be extremely difficult: international organisations are sticky - once established, they are difficult to get rid of, and as long as they persist even on paper, there are going to be revival projects. Focusing on existing organisations might be easier in principle, but the abovementioned factors make it obvious that this is hardly going to be a walk in the park in practice. At least at the moment, the prospects for Latin American integration, no matter under which scenario, look slim. But then again, is regional integration really the answer to Latin America’s problems to begin with?