THE EFFECTS OF THE EU MEMBERSHIP ON THE EXTERNAL TRADE OF ROMANIA

The research carried out on Romania's foreign trade performance aimed at establishing the impact of the Romania's accession to the EU onto the Romanian external trade balance. Another important scientific contribution is the analysis of the impact of the new Romanian trade policy on the general evolution of Romania's foreign trade during the period 1995-2016, for which we used a series of general indicators that we usually find in the statistical yearbooks , under the names of: export value (FOB prices); import value (CIF prices); value of imports (FOB prices); trade balance (FOB exports - CIF imports); trade balance (FOB exports - FOB imports); export per capita. In today's context, it is justified to identify innovative methods and strategies for establishing and capitalizing on the competitive advantages of Romanian companies engaged in foreign trade as a result of our country's accession to the European Union, in order to solve the complex economic problems generated by the major trade deficit of Romania, as well as the creation of mechanisms for implementing the strategies and methods resulting from the researchers conducted to reduce this deficit and to maximize the positive effects of Romania's accession to the EU. As this article shows, Romania's degree of international openness has been sinuous, with the year 2016 being the year when it reached the maximum value of the analyzed period of 83.71%. To this result, an important contribution was almost equal to exports and imports (around 42.32% of trade opening from imports and 41.39% of exports), which represents a significant improvement over the period 2000-2013. Also our analyse for Romania shows that excepting the years 1995-1996, 1998, 2000-2001 and 2003-2007, respectively, 2016, the coefficient of elasticity of imports was higher than the modulus of elasticity of exports, although subunit in the years 1997, 1999, 2005, 2007-2009 and 2013 respectively. Certainly, future research directions will mainly address and develop the same directions we have been dealing with so far, but deepening our research in several directions, such as: regulatory aspects of international trade by investigating the extensive ramifications of the tensions that exist in the relationship between the WTO and the regional trade agreements, which we consider to be of systemic significance, as they also place strong emphasis on Romanian foreign trade and commercial policy, Romania, as an EU member, being part of more than half of the world's functioning bilateral trade agreements; geographic reorientation of Romania's foreign trade by providing studies to Romanian business agents enabling them to maximize the opportunities offered by the rich portfolio of free trade agreements made available by the European Union on the basis of the products that make up current structure