Changes in foreign trade structure and intra-industry trade in five CEECs

The article analyses the structural changes of foreign trade between five Central and Eastern European countries and the EU. It points out that during the nineties, a significant shift has taken place towards technologically more developed products. The former specialisation on low-technology, labour intensive goods strongly weakened and in certain cases new specialisation patterns have been developed among the high-tech products. The level of manufacturing intra-industry trade increased and this in several cases meant product quality improvement as the results of the unit value calculations showed. For these changes in the foreign trade structure those – high and medium-tech – products are responsible which are produced by foreign owned, multinational companies. FDI therefore exerts a determinant effect on the external competitiveness of Central European countries