The International Trade of Non-Euro CEE Countries During the Period 2014-2021. A Multiparameter Analysis

On their development path the Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries partially overcame the gap to the developed countries by means of the external trade, acquiring the needed goods and services and satisfying the foreign demand for their products which otherwise was lacking on their territory or seizing an opportunity. In the current paper the authors aim at analysing the evolution of the trade flows of the countries they thought to be the most similar in this aspect, which are the ones belonging to the non-euro area of the European Union (EU) during the period 2014-2021. The research used the Eurostat database, the products being classified after the Standard International Trade Classification (SITC) main categories in order to find out the sectors with the largest contribution to the total surplus or deficit. Moreover, there were identified the main partners of every analysed country and calculated the evolution of respective trade balances at the start and the end of the selected period of time. The authors findings reveal an increasing dependency on exports to Germany, imports from China, decreasing imports of mineral fuels from Russia and also important similarities and differences in the group. The novelty of the manuscript resides in comparing the most profitable sectors during the analysed period and identifying the partners' contribution to the surplus or the deficit. The current research might be extended with a more in-depth level of multinational enterprises and also in the case of services.