Development of convergence in foreign trade of the new EU-members

Abstract

AbstractŠEVELA, M.: Development of convergence in foreign trade of the new EU-members. Acta univ. agric. et silvic. Mendel. Brun., 2005, LIII, No. 3, pp. 195-204 The importance of convergence in foreign trade is mentioned in the theory of optimum currency from the very beginning. Also the OCA index incorporates two basic aspect of foreign trade. The territorial reorientation is always characteristic for new EU-members and this process was already accomplished by most of the new EU-members. The more developed associated countries are already at the level of EU-members. The commodity orientation is connected highly with the competitiveness and level of development of the whole economy and the shares of sophisticated product in exports reflect it. hence the evaluation was concerned on the manufactured goods, SITC group 7-Machinery and transport equipment and the high-technology intensive products. From viewpoint of commodity structure the countries joining EU in 1995 are the most successful. They are closely followed by the other EU-members. The new EU-members of 2004 are lagged, the lag is getting wider with the rise of technology intensity. Only the Czech Republic and hungary are able to compete with the older EU-members. The commodity convergence of EU countries is runs very dynamically in new members, the shares of other EU countries are almost constant. The results of intra-industry trade also reflect the lag in competitiveness of economies under transition. The transition countries are very heterogeneous in the intra-industry trade as well. The internal structure of transition countries is similar to result obtained when assessing the commodity structure.foreign trade, convergence, European Union, EU-enlargement Ročník LIII 19 Číslo 3, 2005 195

Is there a trade convergence between South East European and Central European economies

“…Excluding Albania, where a decline was detected, and N. Macedonia, with indices that were rather stagnant and then rose slightly, the similarity between the export structures of all other SEEC and EU import structures increased. This trend has been detected previously in the studies of Nikolić (2011Nikolić ( , 2013 on Turkey and Serbia (both for the period 2000-2007), B&H (2005( -2011( ), and Montenegro (2005( -2012, which reveal rising similarity coefficients (with 2-digit SITC data) between the exports of the four observed economies and EU import demand.…”

“…The transformation of CEEC and SEEC export structures and their possible structural convergence with other EU members has also been a subject of interest (Fontoura & Crespo 2007, 2005. Fontoura & Crespo show that in the period 1995-2001 the export structure of these economies was transformed: the share of unskilled labour-intensive products declined and technology and skilled labour-intensive products grew.…”