engleski

The impact of the Accession of the Republic of Croatia into the European Union

The article analyses foreign trade exchange of Croatia before and after the accession to the European Union. Foreign trade exchange is one of determinants of the Gross Domestic Product, besides private and public consumption and investments. Considering significantly greater imports than exports of goods and a big foreign trade deficit during the last almost two decades, the accession of Croatia into the European Union signified a long anticipated turning point for the Croatian economy. Analysis in the thesis shows that during the first eight months of 2014 in comparison to the first eight months of 2013 exports increased by 10% and imports increased by 3, 6%, which affected the decrease of the trading balance by 4, 5%. The consequence of bigger increase of exports than imports was increase of the export import ratio. Increase of the exports was registered with most of the EU countries (17 out of 27), as well as with the CEFTA countries, while at the same time the imports from the CEFTA countries decreased. The thesis emphasizes competitiveness or non- competitiveness of the Croatian economy, which caused and still causes a high deficit in the foreign trade balance. Out of 148 countries according to the global competitiveness index of the World Economic Forum Croatia is rated as 75th on the list. The thesis describes the example of pooling of small and medium sized enterprises into clusters, which could in this way (but still are not) be more competitive to bigger companies, increase their capacities and effectivness and achieve better international competitiveness.

foreign trade exchange, import, export, Croatia, EU

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