"Assembled in Europe" - the role of processing trade in EU export performance

Lucian Cernat and Michael Pajot
Additional contact information
Michael Pajot: DG Trade

No 2012-3, DG TRADE Chief Economist Notes from Directorate General for Trade, European Commission

Abstract: According to recent analyses, processing trade represents around 50% of total Chinese exports. But processing trade is not just a feature of Chinese trade or other emerging economies. It is also one option that EU trade policy offers to interested companies, subject to a specific set of rules and procedures. If in the case of China processing trade is responsible for half of China's impressive trade performance, what is the role of processing trade in Europe?

This column investigates the use and role of processing trade - a trade regime credited as a key driver of Chinese export performance but largely overlooked in Europe - on the overall and sectoral EU trade performance in recent years. It argues that, despite its rather low profile in trade debates, EU exports after inward processing accounted for around 10% of total extra-EU exports in 2011. Given its non-negligible share, processing trade procedures may require further reflection on how to maximize its benefits for EU's external competitiveness.

Keywords: EU TRADE; EU exports; processing trade regime (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 9 pages
Date: 2012-10-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-int
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/docs/2012/october/tradoc_150006.pdf Full text (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/docs/2012/october/tradoc_150006.pdf [307 Temporary Redirect]--> https://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/docs/2012/october/tradoc_150006.pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ris:dgtcen:2012_003

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in DG TRADE Chief Economist Notes from Directorate General for Trade, European Commission Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Zornitsa Kutlina-Dimitrova ().