Globalization and the Economic Partnership Agreement

Globalization is the context in which the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) was mooted and negotiated. The goal of having an EPA and the objectives pursued by both the European Union (EU) and the CARIFORUM were strongly influenced by the state of globalization and the actual and anticipated trends of globalization. Globalization involves the progressive reduction or elimination of national barriers to the international movement of goods, services, capital, and technology. Given that globalization is not a straightforward process but an uneven one, there has not been a complete standardization of the rules governing international transactions and flows. A basic set of principles guiding trade rules has been enshrined in the agreements that constitute the World Trade Organization (WTO), but coverage is not universal in either subject matter or country membership. It has proven difficult to extend the coverage and depth of WTO rules: there has been a pronounced proliferation of bilateral, regional, and plurilateral trade agreements. In a world where developed countries and gigantic multinational corporations (MNCs) can exercise disproportionate power to avoid, circumvent, ignore, and override multilateral rules and overwhelm the sovereignty of small, poor, and developing countries, trade agreements assume considerable importance for the weaker partner.