ABSTRACT
The three chapters in this section by Fidel Aroche Reyes, María Elena Cardero and Pablo Ruiz-Nápoles cover three distinct aspects of the economic integration in North America that culminated recently in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Special emphasis is devoted to the perspectives of the Mexican economy, by far the smallest and less developed country participating in the NAFTA integration process. From these analyses, there are several lessons that we can learn for the process of economic integration in Europe – specifically, the integration of East European economies like Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, the Baltic States and Turkey into the European Union. The stage of economic development of Mexico is comparable to the average stage of economic development of the potential EU candidate states. Thus, we might expect that these countries will face similar problems to Mexico during their integration process into the EU.
