Regionalisation of the European Union’s Trade Policy in 1990–2017

Abstract

Regionalisation of trade policy is an increasingly common trend in the 21 st century. The European Union concluded its fist trade agreements in the 1970s, but at the end of the 1990s, it applied a de facto moratorium on such agreements. In 2005, this policy was changed, and the EU is a signatory to 35 agreements – creating either a free trade area or a customs union. The aim of the paper was to show how the European Union’s approach to concluding preferential trade agreements changed over the period of 1990–2017. The reasons for the EU’s increased interest in regionalisation and the development of regional links with partners in various regions of the world were presented, including selected key trade agreements.