How does a regional organization function in practice when legal deadlines collide with political realities? And why does Latin America keep producing overlapping trade blocs, without converging into one unified project?

🎙️ Dr. Ivo Ganchev speaks with Dr. Humberto Zuñiga Schroder (Universidad del Pacífico, Lima), an international trade lawyer and former official in the Legal Service of the General Secretariat of the Andean Community (CAN), to explore:

· What it’s like working inside the Andean Community: procedures, negotiation space, and real-world constraints

· How theory differs from practice—and how practitioner experience changes how we understand compliance and disputes

· CAN’s resilience, key achievements, and the hard question of how to measure success

· Institutional design and reform debates, including the limits of the Andean Parliament

· Legal and institutional borrowing from Europe: when it does and doesn’t translate

· Free movement, security concerns, and why judicial cooperation in criminal matters remains underdeveloped

· Trade integration across Latin America: why there are so many blocs, and why “convergence” is so difficult

· CAN–MERCOSUR relations, Bolivia’s position, and the prospects (or limits) of deeper bloc-to-bloc integration

· The WTO’s dispute-settlement crisis, alternative pathways (including interim appeal arbitration), and what this means for the region

· How U.S. tariff politics and China’s economic weight shape trade dynamics—without necessarily transforming regionalism

🎧 New Regional Orders is the official podcast of the Centre for Regional Integration, hosted by Dr. Ivo Ganchev. Each season focuses on a different world region, unpacking the political, economic, social, and geographic factors that drive regional change.

🔗 Learn More:

Centre for Regional Integration: https://regionalintegration.org

Dr. Ivo Ganchev: https://ivoganchev.com

Dr. Humberto Zuñiga Schroder: https://faculty.up.edu.pe/en/persons/humberto-angel-zuñiga-schroder/