Arbitral awards under Mercosur's dispute settlement mechanism

The Mercado Comu n del Sur (Southern Common Market) is better known - in Spanish - as Mercosur. It is, most of all, an economic integration process. It also aims, however, to achieve certain political, social, and cultural objectives. Mercosur was set up by the states of the Latin American Southern Cone. It has taken considerable effort and there have been some difficulties, but Mercosur has grown at a sustained pace and met with some success since its establishment in 1991. The Mercosur contains a market ofmore than 210 million people broadly distributed over approximately 14 million km2. It embodies an almost unlimited wealth in terms ofhuman and natural resources, a vast potential in all sectors of the economy, and offers to the rest of the world countless opportunities for investment and business. This article will discuss, for the first time, the main issues contained in the three arbitral awards rendered up to now within the framework of the Mercosur dispute settlement mechanism.