The Application of EU Common Trade Policy in New Member States after Enlargement - Consequences on Russia's Trade with Poland

When the Enlargement took place on 1 May 2004, The Common Trade Policy with all trade policy instrument were automatically applied to imports into the enlarged European Union. As a result, current EU trade defence law and measures are automatically in force in Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia. Following this the new Member States no longer apply their own, national trade defence action, they also cannot use trade defence instruments against each other. It means, furthermore, that all trade defence measures that EU-15 had against imports from any of the new Member States disappeared automatically after 1 May 2004. Equally, measures among the new Member States also disappear. Undoubtedly, the EU Eastern Enlargement created new conditions in which found themselves 8 countries from Central and Eastern Europe that became EU new members as well as Russia that stayed outside the Community. The aim of this paper, therefore was to analyse the potential effect of adopting the EU trade laws and measures applicable to Russian imports by Poland - country that always had the strongest trade ties with Russia from all post -Soviet bloc. Despite the comparative analysis of customs duty rates applied to Russian products and as well as selection of trade defence measures against Russia's export before and after Poland's accession to the EU in chapter third, the paper also describes the EU Common Trade Policy and what the adoption of this policy means for member states and non-members. Moreover, a short outline of mutual Russia - Poland trade relations is included in order to present subject in more comprehensive way and make reader familiar with the back ground of research.