ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the limited success of EU attempts to promote regional economic integration through the Economic Partnership Agreements in Africa. In order to explain this, it highlights the disconnect between the model of economic integration embodied by the EPAs and the set of entrenched ideas and political practices that informed African regionalism. The chapter emphasises the place of existing regional organisational forms as a key part of the broader trade regime complex in which North–South trade negotiations are embedded, and one that may impede the external imposition of models of economic governance.
