Cotonou and Pacific Regionalism

Regional cooperation between geographically contiguous groupsof countries has become an important aspect of international tradeand development policy, with regional tradeagreements being seenas stepping stones along the road to multilateral free trade. Thisbook examines whether the Pacific island countries can cooperatetogether as a region, along cultural, political-institutional andeconomic lines. This is important because the ongoing trade and aidpartnership between the European Union and the Africa, Caribbeanand Pacific (ACP) states is meant to be based upon reciprocal freetrade agreements, called Economic Partnership Agreements (EPA).EPAs were introduced by the Cotonou Agreement, which was concludedbetween the EU and the ACP in 2000. A big question is whether thePacific island countries have a strong enough regional identity,political will and capacity to cooperate and liberalise trade atthe regional level. Consequently, this book will be relevant topolicy-makers and students of Pacific island politics and EuropeanUnion development policy, as the Cotonou Agreement poses majorchallenges to the development partnership between the Pacific ACPstates and the EU.