Structural changes in the foreign trade of Hungary and the European Union

Abstract

The spatial and industrial structure of foreign trade of the European Union and Hungary is the result of long development, which goes back several decades. The spatial structure of some industries were influenced by numerous factors (natural, social, economic and political) in recent decades, resulting in specific regional and sectoral structures in industrial trade in the meantime. In EU countries, including Hungary, the spatial and sectoral structure of industrial foreign trade had characteristic changes over the past 20 years. There are winners and losers of these spatial and sectoral transformations. Sometimes the import of some industrial sectors decreased; occasionally the export fell back, while in other industrial sectors the opposite happened. In order to observe and follow the changes of industrial foreign trade (spatial and structural) in the past few years, it is important to examine the transformation of spatial and sectoral industrial foreign trade structure of the European Union and Hungary during time.