Enlargement of the European union - impact on trade of the acceding countries

Abstract

The European Union is an institutional framework for forging unity and cooperation among the people and nations of Europe. Europe emerged from the Second World War with an economy in ruins. Infrastructural and housing damage was enormous; the age structure of available labor skills had been shaken and the capital stock had suffered greatly. From that time on, there were numerous, albeit isolated, calls for co-operation within Europe1. However, none of these was as effective and single-minded in their approach to ‘unify’ Europe and create a powerful network of diverse European nations. The unification of various macro-economic factors as depicted in the following graphs serves as a snapshot of the impact of the integration in the European Union (Note that for clarity of the graphs the biggest and smallest of the countries have been chosen to serve as representatives of the countries in the European Union).