Opportunities and Prospects of Trade Development between Romania and the Russian Federation in the European Context

The present paper has as main objective the analysis of the opportunities and development perspectives of the trade relationship between Romania and the Russian Federation, linked to the latest evolutions of the European and global economic context. Keeping in mind this objective, our paper is structured around three main sections, as follows. The first part, “Economic Context of Romania-Russian Federation Trade Development” is centered upon the global crisis and its effects on the EU, Romania and Russia as well as the EU-Russia increasing bilateral merchandise trade flows. We examine how the global economic crisis interrupted increasing merchandise trade between EU-27 and the Russian Federation and present the main exporter countries from the EU-27 to Russia and the major EU importers from Russia and analyze in a comparative manner the very concentrated trade pattern between EU-27 and Russia. In the next section, “Romania-Russia Trade Development”, we underline that the Russian Federation is the second extra-EU trading partner of our country. We explore Romania’s trade relationship with Russia during pre and post accession to the European Union and also the actual trends of the bilateral trade, which pattern is extremely concentrated. In the last section, “Opportunities and Prospects for the Trade Development between Romania and Russian Federation”, we conclude, on the basis of the comparative and prospective analysis, that: Romania could be well positioned on Russian markets; there are many similarities in competitiveness characteristics of our countries; Romania and Russia have some problematic factors in doing business; strong points of the Romanian manufacturing industry could lead to the diversification of trade pattern and, finally, Romania has the possibility to develop a strong economic partnership with the Russian Federation under the framework of the EU-Russia relationship