EIRP Proceedings, Vol 4 (2009)

Abstract

The EU-27 is by far the largest exporter of goods worldwide: in 2007, goods worth EUR 1 240 billion were exported, against EUR 848 billion by the United States and EUR 889 billion by China. The United States imported slightly more than the EU-27 (EUR 1 472 billion and EUR 1 426billion respectively), more than double the value of total imports registered by China (EUR 698 billion). Under the influence of a lot of general and specific factors, the foreign trade of Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries which recently joined the European Union has been constantly growing till the second part of 2008 year, registering higher yearly growth rates than the total of EU-27. In the last years, for the foreign trade of all the ten new EU members CEE states it appears like a common trace the deeply process of growing the importance of the intra EU commercial relationship within the total international economic relationship of these countries. Between the new EU members, the most important weight of the intra EU commerce in their total foreign trade is registered by the Check Republic (83%), Slovakia (80%), Latvia (76%), Poland (75%), and Estonia (75%). In business environment, institutional, and logistics performance, the EU accession countries stand out as the best performers. Most new EU member states are in fact catching up to OECD countries on some measures of logistics performance, and all rank in the top 50 with the exception of Lithuania (ranked 58th).