Regional Integration and Development in Small States

The author examines the impact of various trade policies for small developing states in the face of changing international trends - including globalization, the proliferation of regional integration agreements, the changing relationship between African, Caribbean, and Pacific (ACP) countries and the European Union (EU), the erosion of ACP preferences in the EU market, the Everything-But-Arms Initiative (a 2001 EU initiative providing forty nine developing countries free access to EU markets), and the negotiations on the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas. The author concludes that: 1) The participants in South-South regional integration agreements should further reduce their external trade barriers. 2) The trade component of the Cotonou Agreement between the ACP countries and the EU is likely to harm those countries. The ACP countries should liberalize their trade regimes to reduce the size of transfers to the EU. 3) Small states should sign free trade agreements with the rest of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and pursue multilateral liberalization. 4) Small states, and other developing countries should intensify South-South regional cooperation in the area of regional public goods. 5) The EU, and other OECD countries should provide country-specific technical assistance for "behind the border" reforms in small states - something specified in the Cotonou Agreement for ACP countries - as well as assistance in implementing their commitments under World Trade Organization agreements.