Abstrakt

Free foreign trade is one of the most important issues all over the world. The impact of bilateral trade can be studied both from economic as well as political perspectives; when it improves economic development, it also creates the conditions for international stability. The aim of the article is to conduct a comparison of the changes to export trade flow in the Central European Free Trade Agreement 2006, with reference to countries of the Western Balkans in the period of 2005 - 2014. The CEFTA was a precondition for European integration, meant to prepare its members for mutual co-operation. The present study focuses on export trade and analyses of the undergone changes with reference to the value of bilateral trade, the structure of this trade by partners, exported products and the concentration rate. CEFTA 2006 improved the trade relations between Western Balkan countries and other countries in the world, especially EU members, in terms of the increase in the value of exports, the concentration of partners and the structure of exported products. The most popular countries with which CEFTA 2006 parties started to trade were Germany, Italy and Slovenia and the most common trade products were consumer and intermediate goods machines and metals. The achievements could have been even higher if the region had not been affected by the global economic crisis which reached the local economies through indirect channels, i.e. the less convenient credit policy run by foreign owners of local banks.

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