Globalization is the word on everyone's lips, yet regional agreements have never been so popular.
There are around 170 regional agreements in existence today, half of these concluded since 1990. Another 70 or so are under discussion. In Africa alone there are 13 different regional trade agreements, and by 2005 virtually all the Americas and the Euro-Mediterranean area will be involved in a regional arrangement of one kind or another. These developments raise important questions for the global trade system which should be debated. In the 1990s, it was widely assumed that building complementary regional and multilateral institutions was the only way to grapple with the complexities of a fast-changing international economy.