EAC Integration Vs Sovereignty – The Inevitable Clash

The integration process of the East African Community (EAC) has now reached an interesting stage - consolidating the gains of the customs union, operationalising the common market protocol and negotiating the monetary union.This stage has become a test on how much sovereignty each of the five EAC partner states can cede to the community and its organs so that they play their role in the spirit of article 126 of the treaty.Article 126(2) (b) of the EAC treaty requires partner states to harmonize all their national laws pertaining to the Community.This is also in line with article 47 of the Protocol on the establishment of the Common Market Protocol which enjoins partner states to approximate their national laws and to harmonize their policies and systems for purposes of implementing the protocol.For genuine reasons of protecting their national interests, politicians, while supportive of integration in theory, are unwilling to surrender much of their sovereignty in practical terms to supra national organs. A layman crossing any of the borders in the region will still wonder why there are still cumbersome procedures at entry points almost two years down the road since the Common Market Protocol came into force.This is why the rhetoric of calling on partner states to harmonize their respective national laws to conform to different EAC protocols has and will always be at play. Tanzania has expressed fears over fast tracking the political federation, while the Council of Ministers on February 1, 2012, during the East African Legislative Assembly (EALA) sessions in Kampala, out rightly rejected the idea of upgrading the Inter University Council for East Africa (IUCEA) to accredit foreign universities. The Ministers and a large number of EALA Legislators argued that IUCEA is ill-equipped and powers of accrediting Universities should be left to national bodies as has been the norm.Although the house passed the bill to give IUCEA these powers, it wouldn’t be right for a foreign University to access operation rights in a partner states without clearance by the country’s accreditation body. And this sovereignty cacoon reminds me of an elderly man, a head of a political party in Tanzania who, while at a political integration dialogue in Nairobi last year, expressed fears that some partner states were into this project with plans to encroach on his country’s land.This scenario introduces the need for sensitization campaigns because If a political leader can get wrong the objectives of the integration process, what about the wanainci (ordinary citizens)? It important that East Africans appreciate that we are all into this process to position the region for economic development and global trade competitiveness. The clash between sovereignty and the EAC integration spirit can be compared to the proverbial man who committed to marriage but wanted to live as a bachelor at the same time.This challenge of partner states having their cake and eating it are not unique to the EAC; the European Union (EU) has had similar obstacles.European countries have differing views on both the goals of integration and the most appropriate strategies to achieve it. Nevertheless, the EU does have, at its disposal, several unique levers to make an effective contribution to the development of integration policy, complementing the primary responsibility of its member states. In view of the common market protocol, substantial progress has been registered and efforts are on to harmonise key areas like; immigration, employment and labour laws cannot be emphasized. Although pessimists have rushed to say that the idea of a political federation is dead in the water, In my view, considering the journey we have moved, there are more reasons to be optimistic of the integration process. For the EAC with a population of more than 130 million people, and a GDP of $79.2 billion, we should not look at how many times we have fallen, but the number of times we have risen after falling.

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EAC Integration Vs Sovereignty – The Inevitable Clash