title: Transformations on whose terms?
title: Understanding the new EU-ACP trade relations from the outside in
titleType: Subtitle
Creators: name: Lorenz, Ulrike
Publisher: name: Freie Universität Berlin
Year: 2012
Subjects: subject: 300 Sozialwissenschaften::320 Politikwissenschaft

description: 1\. Introduction 6 2\. From Block-to-Block to Region-to-Region. The EPA Negotiations with a ‘Not So Weak South’ 7 3\. Theorizing Regional Dynamics in the New EU-ACP Trade Relations 11 3.1 Beyond a ‘North-South’ Scenario 11 3.2 Beyond a ‘Global South’ – Regional Hegemons in a Heterogeneous South 12 4\. Comparing Regional Dynamics in the SADC and the EAC EPA Negotiations 13 4.1 Negotiation Structures 13 4.1.1 The Negotiation Structure of the SADC EPA Group 13 4.1.2 The Negotiation Structure of the EAC EPA Group 14 4.2 Regional Coalition Building in the EPA Begotiations 15 4.2.1 From North vs. South to East vs. West – Varying Coalitions in the SADC EPA Group 15 4.2.2 A Joint Approach or a Non-Approach? Inside the EAC Negotiation Group 16 4.3 Leading or Lagging Transformations? Regional Hegemons in the EPA Negotiations 20 4.3.1 South Africa in the SADC-EU EPA Negotiations 20 4.3.2 Kenya in the EAC-EU EPA Negotiations 22 5\. Negotiating Economic Partnership Agreements, Transforming North-South Trade Relations? 24 Literature 26
description: In the past ten years, the long-standing trade relations between the European Union (EU) and the African, Caribbean, and Pacific (ACP) countries have experienced radical transformations. The negotiations of the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) between the EU and seven regional groupings formed by the ACP countries have led to the EU being maneuvered into an unexpectedly weak position. For the first time, European negotiators had to substantially leave their pre-agreed negotiation path and positions due to the immense pressure from ACP countries, regional organizations, and non-state actors – and still have not been able to finalize negotiations that had initially been expected to only take five years until the end of 2007. These developments constitute a two-tire puzzle: Not only could the EU not play its ‘negotiation game’ and largely determine the outcomes of negotiations, but also did the outcomes of the negotiations differ between the individual regional negotiations groups despite a single European mandate for all seven regionally conducted EPA negotiations. The paper argues that a comparative ‘outside-in perspective’ from the ACP countries’ side towards the EU is essential to understand the puzzling EPA negotiation process and its (preliminary) outcomes. More specifically, it argues that the negotiations were rather determined by regional dynamics, different negotiation structures of individual EPA configurations, and the role of regional hegemons than by the EU’s actions and positions. This perspective has so far gained little attention. Trade negotiations with the EU have largely been illustrated as a clear-cut case in most studies and it is to be questioned to what extent the EPA negotiations challenge such a scenario. The paper presents a comparative case study on the EPA negotiation groups of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the East African Community (EAC) from a ‘South-Eastern African perspective’.