ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the implications of the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) for economic integration in the East African Community (EAC). It argues that the case of the EAC EPA is instructive, as it includes many issues that arise in the EPA process and more general, in the European Union (EU) future course of promoting free trade trough regional integration initiatives. The chapter reviews the history, economic and political aspects and effects of the regional integration process in the East Africa region. It examines the influence of EU in the EAC process and especially the EPA negotiations, a typical test case of European influence in the making of the region. The chapter discusses the interim EPA outcome for EAC. In tins case study the chapter gives an example of how the EPA process may well have disrupted the natural course of regional political cooperation by creating adverse extrinsic incentives for the formation of regions.
