NAFTA, the EU and Deficient Global Institutionality

The differences between NAFTA and the EU are clear, as stressed in some of the previous chapters of this book. Yet these differences should not obscure how much the two projects actually have in common. Fundamentally, they are both examples of regional market integration and political institutionalization. Although of very different vintage and shaped by different historical circumstances, there exists an historical link between the two, while their future trajectories are bound to be interconnected because both are building blocks in a wider process of international institutionalization.