The Economic Partnership Agreement between the European Union and the East African Community: Factors explaining the different EAC Member States’ positions towards the EU-EAC EPA

Although the EU-EAC EPA negotiations were finalized in October 2014 and signed by the EU, the EPA has only been signed in the EAC by Rwanda and Kenya which also ratified in September 2016. However, Tanzania, Burundi and Uganda have not signed nor ratified the agreement, citing different reasons. In comparison to other regional economic communities, EAC individual countries cannot adopt the EPA until all the member states have signed and ratified the agreement. The necessity to act unanimously was defined by the EAC countries at the start of the EPA negotiations. Nevertheless, as the EPA text was ready for signature in September 2015, Tanzania (the main opponent of the EPA) started to raise concerns and repeatedly postponed the signing of the agreement. Tanzania argues that; the EPA would hinder industrial development in the country, disrupt regional integration efforts as well as citing the consequences of Brexit on the country’s export revenue given that, the EPA prohibits the introduction of new export tariffs. Burundi, on the other hand, has made the lifting of EU sanctions as a precondition for signing the EPA, whilst Uganda prefers to play a mediating role by signing the agreement after all the other EAC countries have done so, to avoid disrupting the EAC's status quo (Pichon, 2018). The EAC member states’ different attempts at reaching a consensus about the EPA have rather been unsuccessful.Ultimately, the present impasse of the EU-EAC Economic Partnership Agreement induces the question of why some developing countries are in support of signing and adopting a free trade agreement with a developed trade partner or entity like the EU, while others are not. Particularly, why do some EAC Member States, a remarkably homogeneous regional entity with a long history of regionalism, support the adoption of a free trade agreement with the EU as an important instrument towards their economic development, while other member states oppose it? In other words, “What factors explain the different EAC Member States’ positions towards the EU-EAC Economic Partnership Agreement?” This question serves as the overall goal of analysis for this thesis.