Avrupa Bütünleşmesi: Ticari Başarım Açısından Bir İrdeleme

Avrupa Birliği’nin AB en önemli hedeflerinden birisi olan bütünleşme değişik yön ve boyutlarıyla tanımlanabilir ve ölçülebilir. Bu bakımdan, ilgilenilen konuya bağlıolarak, bütünleşme siyasal, toplumsal, kültürel ve iktisadi boyutlarıyla ayrıayrıirdelenebilir. Bu çalışma, AB içerisindeki bütünleşmenin düzeyini ölçmek için üye ülkelerin ticari başarımlarına odaklanmaktadır. Araştırma sonuçlarıAvrupa içerisindeki ticaret hacminin 1995-2006 yıllarıarasında AB’nin genişleme süreci boyunca arttığınıgöstermektedir. Buna ilaveten, Avrupa içindeki ticaretin toplam ticaretten aldığıpay da artmıştır ki, bu durum iktisadi anlamda birlik içinde belli düzeyde bir bütünleşmenin olduğunu açığa vurmaktadır. Bununla birlikte, önemli iktisadi bloklar üye ülkelerin uzmanlaştıklarısektörlere göre irdelendiğinde AB dahil hiç bir küresel bloğun kendi içerisinde sektörel çeşitlilik bakımından yeterli çeşitliliğe sahip olmadığıtespit edilmiştir. Araştırmada ülkeler arasındaki etkileşimlerin haritalanmasında etkin bir biçimde Toplumsal AğyapıÇözümlemesi TAÇ araçlarıkullanılmıştır. Çalışmanın önemli bir diğer özelliği, hem AB’ye üye ülkeler arasında hem de AB üyesi ülkeler ile diğer ülkeler arasındaki uluslararasıticaret örüntüsünün, TAÇ’daki araçlar zenginleştirilerek ve ülkelere göre hakim sektörler belirginleştirilerek çözümlenmesidir.

Integration, one of the major objectives of European Union EU , can be described and measured through various aspects and dimensions. In this respect, depending on the subject of interest, integration may be evaluated according to political, social, cultural and economic dimensions. This paper focuses on the trade performances of member countries in order to measure the level of integration within the EU. Research findings show that intra-European trade volume has increased during the expansion process of the EU between 1995 and 2006. In addition, share of intra-trade in total has also increased, which reveals a certain level of integration in economic terms. The export volumes among countries revealed that the member states of the European Union constitute a strong economic block with respect to the export-import relationships among themselves. In this study, tools of social network analysis SNA are actively employed in order to map the interactions between corresponding countries. For this purpose, a certain level of minimum value is defined for the volume of trade occurring between countries in order to identify quasi-components, i.e. bi-components or blocks . Furthermore, the reciprocity analysis is also employed in order to observe the mutual integration of countries. In this respect, what is evident from the mapping of import and export relationship between countries is that European Union, South East Asian, Latin American, and East and Central European countries have distinct cluster formations, albeit with some exceptions. The United States, Germany and Japan also appear to be the major trade partners between the blocks. In terms of reciprocity between countries, it is remarkable that the pattern of international trade among the countries who are member of EU seem to be slightly more reciprocal than other regional blocks. This particular situation partly reflects the fact that compared to other blocks the EU is an intensely integrated economic block. Nevertheless, this integration appears to be partial. Indeed, although trade flows among central countries of the EU network Germany, Netherlands, France, United Kingdom, Denmark, Italy, and Belgium are reciprocal, most of flows between the central countries and the rest of EU are not reciprocal. Another distinctive characteristic of this study is the analysis of the pattern of international trade occurring both between the countries that are members of the EU and between the EU member countries and others by enriching the tools available in SNA for the illustration of the dominant sectors according to the countries. For this purpose, firstly localization indexes are used to reveal the specialization of the countries in economic sectors. Although two methods of localization indices Location Quotient Index and Contingency Index CI are reviewed, only one of them CI is employed in this study. Sectoral specialization of each country is defined according to the sector for which CI value is calculated to be maximum. In this respect what is further evident from this study is that when sector-based specialization of countries are taken into account major economic blocks are found to be not self-sufficient in terms of involvement of a spectrum of member states meeting the demand of the block in some specific sectors. Overall, this study reveals the fact that SNA has a high capacity in terms of exploration and representation of interactions between countries, and also explaining the rational behind particular groupings of countries, which otherwise are invisible to the observer without a proper representation of the data. Research data employed in this study is obtained from EUROSTAT, ITC and Correlates of War Project. Future studies may be devoted to the identification of sources and specific dimensions of lack of integration between central countries and more peripheral parts of the EU in a more detailed context. Further SNA based studies focusing on specific sectors and country profiles may also have sound contribution to the international trade theory and the issue of integration