Осъществява Ли България Ползите От Преференциалните Търговски Договорености На Европейския Съюз?[Does Bulgaria Utilise the Benefits of EU’s Preferential Trade Agreements?]

The paper aims at analysing if Bulgaria utilises the benefits of the participation in the Common Commercial Policy of the European Union (EU) by studying the dynamics of Bulgarian trade with countries which have concluded preferential trade agreements (PTAs) with the EU. Economic theory states that PTAs should increase the volume of bilateral trade between the parties. Becoming a Member State of the EU Bulgaria becomes a part of the Union’s Common Commercial Policy – both as being part of the EU Customs Union, as well as becoming a party of all EU trade agreements and negotiations. Hence one could expect Bulgarian trade with those countries that have PTAs with the EU to increase. The extent to which trade liberalization envisaged in different PTAs affects Bulgarian trade relations with the respective countries could be assessed either by the nominal increase of trade flows or by comparing this increase to the trade of the EU in general with these countries. The paper uses both approaches. The first section of the paper discusses the dynamics, the share of intracommunity trade and the commodity structure of Bulgaria’s trade in goods for the period of EU membership. The main section analyses trade relations with countries with which the EU has PTAs in force. The individual agreements, respectively the countries under review are selected based on the type of the agreements (the deepness of trade liberalization) and on the time they were concluded (before or after Bulgaria’s accession to the EU). Thus the agreements that are analysed are the Customs Union Agreement with Turkey (1995), the Free trade agreements (FTAs) with Chile (2003) and South Korea (2011) and the Stabilization and Association Agreements with FYR Macedonia (2004) and Albania (2009).