POSITION OF EU-15 IN WORLD EXPORT IN COMPARISON TO SELECTED COUNTRIES IN A VIEW OF MEASURING TRADE IN VALUE ADDED

The modern world economy is characterised with the specific social division of labour where enterprises based in different countries specialize not only in the production of particular goods and services, but also in particular stages of such production. Literature recognises the fragmentation of production processes on a global scale and the emergence of global value chains (GVCs). As the result of these processes, the final value of the goods and services produced by particular countries contains both domestic and foreign value added content. In this situation, it becomes necessary to revise the approach to determining the position of countries in world export. The article aims to analyse the position of the EU-15 countries in global export in comparison with other countries based on the concept of measuring foreign trade by value added. The calculations use the OECD-WTO data from the TiVA database. Due to the availability of data, the analysis comprised the years 1995-2011. The study showed that the real position of the EU-15 countries was lower than the one given in official statistics. Their share in global export measured based on the new concept was smaller than according to the conventional approach, only to further decrease significantly in the years 1995-2011. This is also confirmed by changes in the position of the EU-15 countries on the list of top global exporters. At the start of the researched period, nine old EU member states featured in the top twenty, while in 2011 only six and most of them ranked lower than in 1995.