No 12, Issue 2       

HUNGARIAN-ROMANIAN ECONOMIC RELATIONS AFTER THE EU ACCESSION OF BOTH COUNTRIES

Telegdi Andrea Ágota

Pages: 107-124

Abstract

This study intends to complement the extensive bibliography written about Hungarian-Romanian political and minority issues, by offering a both historically and economically relevant account of Hungarian-Romanian economic relations. Hungary and Romania are two neighboring countries and strategic partners, with massive foreign trade activity and investments, yet there is minimal research on the impact of these. The timespan will cover 20 years from 2000 until 2019, arching over the years before and after the EU accession. The methodological framework will have a qualitative component with realism, neoliberal institutionalism and regionalism being the main schools of thought on which Hungarian-Romanian relations as a whole are interpreted, and a strong quantitative component using data analysis. The main finding of the paper is that EU membership provided a structured environment for cooperation and economic integration and managed to catapult bilateral trade and FDI from near non-existent figures to billions of euros.

Keywords

Romania; Hungary; economic cooperation; bilateral trade; FDI; EU integration

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.