Foreign trade of the European Union: trends for the first two decades of the 21st century

The article examines the shifts that have manifested themselves in the foreign trade of the European Union during the first 20 years of the 21st century. During this period, the system of the world economy and international exchange had a lot of various cataclysms, troubles and conflicts, which could have different character, have objective and biased causes and reasons. However, perhaps the most extraordinary challenge was the worldwide spread of a new viral infection in 2020, which provoked a wave of prohibitive and restrictive measures in many countries, up to the introduction of a full lockdown. This, in turn, led to the manifestation of a number of crisis shocks in the world economy and international trade, the dynamics of which over the 20-year period under consideration were framed by the recessions of 2001 and 2020. Major failures in the global trade turnover were marked by the periods of the global financial and economic crisis of 2009 and the decline in the conjuncture of commodity markets in 2015-2016. All this together could not but affect the evolution of foreign trade relations of the European Union, which managed to maintain its former position as the largest collective subject of international commodity exchange. The author presents the latest statistical materials, calculated data, which are being introduced into the domestic scientific circulation for the first time.