Mixing use of autotools-utils.eclass with regular phase functions and/or random econf/emake calls is unsupported and it never was. And in a near future, it will cause fatal errors during the build process. Please fix it by using correct autotools-utils phase functions as pointed out in the example on top of the eclass and/or its manpage. If you have any trouble, feel free to ping us and we'll help you fix it. Thanks.
Fixed in CVS.
myeconfargs should be an array. Try building with VALGRIND_TESTS="0" and you will notice error.