Environmental analysis of structural and technological change in a context of trade expansion: Lessons from the EU enlargement

The enlargement of the EU towards Central and Eastern Europe started in 2004 and represented a significant challenge for European political and economic agendas. Fifteen years later, Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries have experienced a significant economic growth, mostly based upon industrial development and trade expansion, displaying a strong integration in EU global value chains. In this paper, we aim to analyse if this process of economic and commercial integration has also triggered the externalization of environmental pressures towards Central and Eastern Europe or, on the contrary, trade expansion has been accompanied with a significant technological and structural change in these countries, offsetting the potential scale effects associated to the export growth. To that aim, we use an environmentally extended multi-regional input-output (MRIO) model with information from 2000 to 2016 that will allow us to quantify the PM2.5 emissions embodied in intra-European trade flows. As a second step, we develop a Structural Decomposition Analysis to evaluate the factors driving emissions embodied in exports from CEE to Western EU countries.

Automated summary

The paper examines whether the economic and commercial integration of the EU with Central and Eastern Europe has led to the externalization of environmental pressures on these countries, or if trade expansion has been accompanied by significant technological and structural changes. By using a environmentally extended multi-regional input-output model and Structural Decomposition Analysis, the study quantifies the PM2.5 emissions embodied in intra-European trade flows from 2000 to 2016 and evaluates the factors behind emissions in exports from CEE to Western EU countries.