The Western Politics of East-West Trade Negotiations: East European Countries and the Gatt

One of the major changes occurring in the global political economy relates to the reintegration of the socialist countries. The importance of this topic has increased dramatically in the 1980s. Rapid changes in Soviet foreign economic policy confront the Western countries with a significantly altered situation that can be neither ignored nor wished away. These developments clearly call for an attempt to come to grips with the question of how East-West economic integration will proceed. As a contribution towards addressing this issue, this chapter focuses on the subject of participation by East European countries in the post-war international trade institution, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT).