България И Споразуменията За Преференциална Търговия На Ес[Bulgaria and EU PTAs]

The paper aims at analysing if Bulgaria utilises the benefits of the participation in the Common Commercial Policy of the European Union (EU) by studying the dynamics of Bulgarian trade with countries which have concluded preferential trade agreements (PTAs) with the EU. The first section of the paper discusses the dynamics, the share of intracommunity trade and the commodity structure of Bulgaria’s trade in goods for the period of EU membership. The main section analyses trade relations with countries with which the EU has PTAs in force. The individual agreements, respectively the countries under review are selected based on the type of the agreements (the deepness of trade liberalization) and on the time they were concluded (before or after Bulgaria’s accession to the EU). Thus the agreements that are analysed are the Customs Union Agreement with Turkey (1995), the Free trade agreements (FTAs) with Chile (2003) and South Korea (2011) and the Stabilization and Association Agreements with FYR Macedonia (2004) and Albania (2009).