The paper examines the intra-regional trade of the automotive industry in East-Central Europe as the prioritized target of foreign direct investment and a production site of growing importance in the sector. Our main assumption is that cross-border agglomeration tendencies (reflected in intra-regional trade relations), with the upgrading of the region, play an increasingly important role. After a review of the relevant literature, the paper analyses and explains how the significance and the structure of the connections within the region have recently changed. The empirical survey focuses on the first decade of the 21st century, with the East-Central European countries (Czechia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia) characterized by the considerable presence of the automotive industry.
This article discusses the problems of the sub-regional cooperation in East-Central Europe. It formulates the general conclusions and examines the specific case of the Visegrad Group as the most advanced example of this cooperation. The article identifies the integrating and disintegrating tendencies that have so far accompanied the sub-regional dialogue in East-Central Europe. Yet it claims that the disintegrating impulses prevail over the integrating impulses. EastCentral Europe remains diversified and it has not developed a single platform of the sub-regional dialogue. The common experience of the communist period gives way to the growing difference of the sub-regional interests and the ability of the East-Central European members to coordinate their positions in the European Union is limited. The Visegrad Group is no exception in this regard despite its rich agenda of social and cultural contacts. The Russian-Ukrainian conflict confirms a deep divergence of interests among the Visegrad states that seems more important for the future of the Visegrad cooperation than the recent attempts to mark the Visegrad unity in the European refugee crisis. Finally, the Ukrainian crisis and the strengthening of the NATO’s “Eastern flank” may contribute to some new ideas of the sub-regional cooperation in East-Central Europe, to include the Polish-Baltic rapprochement or the closer dialogue between Poland and Romania.
Full text available at: https://doi.org/10.22215/rera.v10i1.251
The Limits to Dependent Growth in East-Central Europe