CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE: CORRELATIONS BETWEEN THE EU DEPENDENCE-ATTITUDE MATRIX AND COOPERATION INTENSITY WITH CHINA

Abstract

Our first research objective is to outline the degree of dependence on EU trade and investment of the CEE countries included in the 16+1 platform, as well as their attitudes towards the EU. The resulting EU dependence/attitude matrix helps us to identify four groups of CEE countries according to their lower/higher dependence on EU trade and investment, alongside their negative/positive attitudes towards the EU. Our second objective is to classify CEE-16 according to their cooperation intensity with China, as mirrored by their economic and political ties with China. Our investigation underlines that: (1) higher levels of cooperation intensity with China are generally correlated with negative attitudes towards the EU, importance of national interests and need to develop balanced relations with major global actors; (2) lower levels of cooperation intensity with China correspond to euro-optimist/moderate stances, extreme dependence on the internal market or political inertia