Politiche commerciali ed integrazione economica: dall’Accordo Multifibre agli Accordi di Associazione - Tradepolicies and economie integration: from the Multi-Fibre Arrangement Io the Europe Agreements

The present work analyses the pattern of trade relations between the European Union and the Central and Eastern countries which have signed the “Europe Agree¬ments” - i.e. Bulgaria, Czech and Slovak Republics, Hungary, Poland and Romania -in the textile and clothing sector (T&C). This sector has been recently affected by considerable changes in trade policy both at regional and international level. The aim of the paper is to evaluate whether the on-going liberalisation has really contributed to increasing economic integration between the two regions, as agreed in the Europe Agreements. To achieve the goal, both the degree of restrictiveness of trade policy -through a detailed study of quotas and of their effective growth rates for all categories of products subject to quantitative restrictions - and the export flows from the CEECs to the European market have been analysed. The empirical analysis has shown how bilateral agreements signed under the MFA at the end of ‘80s have been deeply af¬fected by CEECs’ transformation process. The EU, on the one hand, has progressively reduced the number of categories subject to restrictions and, on the other hand, it has increased the ceiling of those still in force. Consequently, in T&C the importance of restrict exports on total exports towards the EU has reduced as well as the weight of trade in binding categories. These trends, together with low quota utilisation rates, are common to both direct trade and OPT. However, CEECs share on total EU imports is stable over the period (1988-93) in direct trade, but it considerably increases in OPT regime. This suggests the existence of production and/or competitive problems for CEECs, that up to now did not allow them to profit from better market access condi¬tions to European markets.