New Regionalism and the Emerging Balkans: Regional Trade Integration and EU Accession Process

This chapter analyzes the level of trade openness in the emerging Balkans, recent changes in its export competitiveness, trade composition, and trade pattern with the EU and the rest of the world. More precisely, it examines the beneficial effects of trade liberalization, intraregional trade, and trade relations in the region with the EU. Then, Chapter 4 assesses the influence of the intraregional integration on the economy, recent trends in the export and import structures and effectiveness of the MoU trade liberalization initiative and CEFTA 2006 trade cooperation as well as compares CEFTA members by the trade integration index. Moreover, the chapter employs two indicators: trade intensity and trade propensity to explore whether trade between CEFTA 2006 members and EU is more or less than the CEFTA 2006 region does on average.