Structural Changes and Global Trends in European Union Trade: Insights and Trends

The study aims at researching and presenting structural changes and global trends in distributive trade of European Union, resulted from liberalization of economic activities within the EU. During the last decades, EU trade went through deep transformation and structural changes. Level of development, structure of trade network, as well as structure of retail forms, differ from one country to another. Regardless of differences between particular national and regional markets within EU, almost all countries participate in increased trend of internationalization, concentration and dislocation of traditional retail towards modern sale forms. On a global scale, internationalization of trade should lead to more integrated and uniform development of a whole world trade. First study deals with: the level of development and structure of the distributive trades in European union, and then processes the global trends (the changing in the trade structure of European union, increase of the share of retail with own brand, the concentration of the trade, the internationalization of retail trade).