6533b7d4fe1ef96bd12627a0

RESEARCH PRODUCT

Exogenous Interference: The European Union’s Economic Partnership Agreements and the Stalled SADC Customs Union

Johannes Muntschick

subject

Market integrationEconomic integrationbusiness.industryInternational economicsInternational tradeEconomic Partnership AgreementsCustoms unionInternational free trade agreementEuropean integrationmedia_common.cataloged_instanceBusinessEuropean unionShadow (psychology)media_common

description

Focussing on the struggle for the scheduled SADC Customs Union, Muntschick reveals that extra-regional actors can actually have a negative impact on regional economic integration in the SADC. Firstly, this chapter refers to the organisation’s agenda on market integration and clarifies the intra-regional demand for the envisaged customs union. Secondly, it highlights the SADC member states’ important but asymmetric trade relations to the European Union and, in regard to this shadow structure of extra-regional interdependence, explains the interfering impact of Brussels’s Economic Partnership Agreements (EPA) on deeper market integration in the SADC. This chapter concludes that the European Union’s bilateral and remunerative EPAs fuelled internal fragmentation in the SADC and thus make it almost impossible for the SADC customs union to become a reality in the future.

yearjournalcountryeditionlanguage
2017-10-06
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45330-9_5