ELIMINATION OF NON-TARIFF BARRIERS IN REGIONAL TRADE INTEGRATIONS: THE CEFTA 2006 EXPERIENCE

Abstract

For all the economies in the global world the question of trade is becoming more important by the day. But the possibility to export on the global market meets many impediments in the form of non-tariff barriers, rather than tariff these days. CEFTA 2006 regional trade integration is not an exception with more than 100 NTBs introduced during its existence. Our research found that Serbia and Albania are CEFTA 2006 signatories with the most NTBs introduced in the observed period. CEFTA has a very efficient institutional mechanism, Subcommittee on Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) and Non-Tariff Barriers (NTBs), for the removal of NTBs between signatories. We have researched three case studies of bilateral NTBs in Serbia’s intra-CEFTA 2006 which demonstrate that our trade partner uses policy oriented NTBs. The removal of NTBs at the global, as well as regional levels is crucial for the development of trade flows after the world economic crisis.