The EAC Common Market Protocol: An Investigation of its Negotiation- Based fault Lines and their Explanatory Potential for the complications of WTO's EPA Negotiations

Kenya - 30 November 2012

On the 20th day of November 2009, in the city of Arusha, Tanzania, presidents Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete (Tanzania), Pierre Nkurunziza (Burundi), Mwai Kibaki (Kenya), Paul Kagame (Rwanda), and Yoweri Kaguta Museveni (Uganda) jointly signed the Protocol on the Establishment of the East African Community Common Market. In the spirit of the Treaty for the Establishment of the East African Community, the protocol provides for the free movement of goods, the free movement of persons, the free movement of labour, the right of establishment, the right of residence, the free movement of services, and the free movement of capital. As a negotiated deal, the protocol presents negotiation scholars with an opportunity to understand what goes into international deal-making endeavours. First, the fact that the negotiations were effectively conducted and concluded in a period of two years challenges the standard text book assumption that negotiations require ample time to be successfully concluded. Secondly, since the negotiations, by their success, ended in a manner that was contrary to expectations (considering the acrimony that was reported in the local press even one day prior to the signing of the protocol), it looks like there were silent powerful interventions that shaped the conclusion of the negotiations. If these assumptions are correct, it would be interesting to know what the interventions were and the actual country positions that were overridden by them (the powerful interventions). Thirdly, and more importantly, it would be useful to establish if the way in which the hurried negotiations were conducted could give us clues as to where the fault lines for possible evidence of deal stress in the EAC Common Market Protocol are likely to be. On a broader scale of research concerns, it would be interesting to find out the explanatory potential of what is observed in the East African situation for the current complications in WTO’s EPA negotiations.
 
Specific questions arising from the outlined range of concerns include: (i) What were the contentious issues that arose during the Common Market Protocol negotiations? (ii) What were the country offers and concessions that led to the conclusion of the agreements in the relatively short negotiation period of two years? (iii) What political and other influences led to such offers and concessions? (iv)What fault lines may be emerging from the kind of hurried deals that were made? (v) What deal-mending strategies could be recommended to the EAC Secretariat in the endeavour to address the fault lines from a negotiation point of view? (vi) In what ways can the EAC Common Market Protocol experience help us understand/explain the situation in WTO’s EPA negotiations?

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