Avrupa Bütünle mesi: Ticari Ba ar m A s ndan Bir rdeleme

Integration, one of the major objectives of European Union (EU), can be described and measured through various aspectsand dimensions. In this respect, depending on the subject of interest, integration may be evaluated according to political, social,cultural and economic dimensions. This paper focuses on the trade performances of member countries in order to measure thelevel of integration within the EU. Research findings show that intra-European trade volume has increased during the expansionprocess of the EU between 1995 and 2006. In addition, share of intra-trade in total has also increased, which reveals a certainlevel of integration in economic terms. The export volumes among countries revealed that the member states of the EuropeanUnion constitute a strong economic block with respect to the export-import relationships among themselves. In this study, toolsof social network analysis (SNA) are actively employed in order to map the interactions between corresponding countries. For thispurpose, a certain level of minimum value is defined for the volume of trade occurring between countries in order to identifyquasi-components, (i.e. bi-components or blocks). Furthermore, the reciprocity analysis is also employed in order to observe themutual integration of countries. In this respect, what is evident from the mapping of import and export relationship betweencountries is that European Union, South East Asian, Latin American, and East and Central European countries have distinctcluster formations, albeit with some exceptions. The United States, Germany and Japan also appear to be the major trade partnersbetween the blocks. In terms of reciprocity between countries, it is remarkable that the pattern of international trade among thecountries who are member of EU seem to be slightly more reciprocal than other regional blocks. This particular situation partlyreflects the fact that compared to other blocks the EU is an intensely integrated economic block. Nevertheless, this integrationappears to be partial. Indeed, although trade flows among central countries of the EU network (Germany, Netherlands, France,United Kingdom, Denmark, Italy, and Belgium) are reciprocal, most of flows between the central countries and the rest of EU arenot reciprocal. Another distinctive characteristic of this study is the analysis of the pattern of international trade occurring bothbetween the countries that are members of the EU and between the EU member countries and others by enriching the toolsavailable in SNA for the illustration of the dominant sectors according to the countri