EU: regional trade agreements (RTAs) from 1994 to 2024

The foreign trade policy of the European Union is one of the most notable policy areas which is managed centrally by the institutions of the EU, rather than by member states. The EU negotiates regional trade agreements on behalf of its members with partner countries, in order to facilitate greater flows of goods and services, and to open up new export markets for European businesses.

The EU's regional trade agreements

The EU has engaged in a number of distinct phases where it has negotiated regional trade agreements with partner countries. In the early 1990s it concluded a host of agreements with Central & Eastern European countries who aimed to join the union in the future (and did so in 2004 and 2007). In the 2000s and early 2010s, the EU concluded a new round of trade agreements with candidate countries in Eastern and South-Eastern Europe, such as Albania (2006 & 2009), Montenegro (2008 & 2010), Serbia (2010 & 2013), among others. Since the latter half of the 2010s, the EU has turned its attention towards East Asia, concluding agreements with Japan (2019), Singapore (2019), and Vietnam (2020).