The commercial openness of European Union (EU) Member States results in a trade in goods that is mostly with other European partners, with Germany holding the position of a privileged partner, in particular with respect to the new EU Member States. To a certain extent, this is also the case for France in respect of Spain and Italy. The new EU Member States, which are very open but are small in terms of economic power, have a significantly smaller presence in the intra-European trade in goods.

This way in which the trade in goods is organised, which has been relatively stable for the last 20 years despite the increasing openness of the European economies, is not surprising in itself. It is merely a result of the fact that two Member States have a tendency to trade in accordance with their power within the intra-European trade. It would be more interesting to examine whether or not those two countries trade more that their trading power would suggest alone. It is this aspect that is examined by the notion of intensity in relation to the trade analysed in this dossier. On average, over the period 1994‑2016, the most intensive intra‑European trade in goods appears to be affected by geography, with the existence of trade hubs (Western European, Nordic countries, Baltic countries, Central Europe and the Mediterranean countries of South-Eastern Europe), at the crossroads of which certain countries are situated, such as Germany. However, the dynamic development of the intensity of trade over the last 20 years shows a coming together of countries that are geographically distant from each other, in particular between Eastern and Western Europe, in the context of the successive expansions of the EU over the period.