engleski

Export benefits of the Central and Eastern european countries' integration into the European union

The paper aims to analyze the structure of existing foreign trade flows between the CEEC and the EU, as well as to point out certain changes, which happened in the past decade. The goal of the paper is to analyze regional and product structure of the CEEC export in the EU and to project the implications on the export in case that these countries become the full EU members. The paper will construct projections of export in actual associated status and in case of full membership in the EU. Given results will be compared with the changes in realized export. The analysis will include the CEFTA countries, which are the closest to the full EU membership. A special attention will be given to Croatia. The projected research results have shown that all CEFTA countries (except Hungary) have underutilized export potentials, which could be linked to their openness and their orientation towards export to the EU. The liberalization of customs system in the EU had encouraged the export greatly (the industrial products import will be completely free by the end of 2002). Besides the extent of the CEEC export to the EU market, it is important to mention its structural change (exp. Hungary): the share of labor and resource intensive goods is decreasing, whilst the share of capital intensive goods is increasing. Integration into the EU will stimulate the export increase and will further improve the export structures, which reflect changes in the specialization of trade.

European Integration; countries in transition; gravity model; potential export; export structure

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