Preferencyjne porozumienia handlowe a liberalizacja obrotów międzynarodowych

This paper deals with preferential trading agreements (known also as regional trade arrangements) and their role in liberalization of international trade. Regional trade arrangements make a permanent, dynamic and wide-spread feature of the contemporary world economy. They tend to influence the international trade liberalization in two ways: first, facilitating intraregional trade flows, and, secondly, affecting the multilateral liberalization. Regional liberalization process, expanding world-wide, has achieved a higher degree of fulfilment than what has been accomplished multilaterally, in the G A IT context. As far as the preferential trading agreements affect the world trade liberalization, the results are not explicit. The nature of regional liberalization is always discriminatory in relation to third countries. It implies therefore a relatively greater protection toward imports originating from third countries. However, taking into account some other effects of regional liberalization one can hardly admit it to be detrimental to multilateral trade system.