Opportunities for EU Foreign Trade with Asian Countries: Case of Bulgaria, Czech Republic and Slovak Republic with China, India, and Japan

Abstract

Before the coronavirus disease crisis, the EU-27 foreign trade as a whole and the member states` trade in particular, have encountered certain challenges with the expansion of the Asian economies worldwide. On the one hand, the Single Market is one of the important achievements of the integration process in Europe by providing free movement of goods and services and eliminating the customs duties and the quantitative restrictions and barriers. On the other hand, the competition among the countries in the world has increased, thus reflecting on the production and foreign trade opportunities for the European countries. The enforcement of the preferential foreign trade agreements is one of the activities of the EU trade policy introduced in recent years to improve the EU position. However, the real implementation of these already signed agreements and the intensity of trade between both the parties remain the main issues of the win-win strategy in foreign trade. The paper reviews the trade relationships between the EU-27 with a special focus on the Czech Republic, the Slovak Republic and Bulgaria, and three of the major economies in Asia – China, Japan and India, and the challenges and opportunities they face in their bilateral exports and imports including the consequences of the coronavirus disease pandemic.