European Union's Competitiveness and Export Performance in Context of EU - Russia Political and Economic Sanctions

This paper aims to explore performance of European Union's export in context of competitiveness targets enclosed in Europe 2020 strategy. Authors are addressing recent geo-political events regarding EU-Russia political and economic sanctions. Authors evaluate only economic results from sanctions and do not make an analysis of the nature of political sanctions. Paper gives an overview of the European Union trade performance within last 15 years and makes detailed analysis of the trade structure. Further, authors address European Union - Russia trade and nature of the trade. At the end of the article authors evaluate impact of the sanctions that took effect within a last year. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd.