CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE: CORRELATIONS BETWEEN THE EU DEPENDENCE-ATTITUDE MATRIX AND COOPERATION INTENSITY WITH CHINA

• Main Author: IULIA MONICA OEHLER-ȘINCAI
• Format: Article
• Language: ron
• Published: Institute for World Economy 2017-10-01
• Series: Revista de Economie Mondială
• Subjects: Central and Eastern Europe (CEE); European Union (EU); China; 16+1 platform
• Online Access: http://iem.ro/rem/index.php/REM/article/view/590/658

Our first research objective is to outline the degree of dependence on EU trade and investment of the CEE countries included in the 16+1 platform, as well as their attitudes towards the EU. The resulting EU dependence/attitude matrix helps us to identify four groups of CEE countries according to their lower/higher dependence on EU trade and investment, alongside their negative/positive attitudes towards the EU. Our second objective is to classify CEE-16 according to their cooperation intensity with China, as mirrored by their economic and political ties with China. Our investigation underlines that: (1) higher levels of cooperation intensity with China are generally correlated with negative attitudes towards the EU, importance of national interests and need to develop balanced relations with major global actors; (2) lower levels of cooperation intensity with China correspond to euro-optimist/moderate stances, extreme dependence on the internal market or political inertia.