The European Central Bank has issued a democracy-weighted trade index that measures the level of trade between EU member states and both dictatorships and liberal democracies. The index is based on import data.
Applied collectively to the EU by measuring the trade of each member state, the DWT Index shows that Europe’s trading with dictatorships increased after 1999, but this is mainly due to China’s entry into the World Trade Organisation which rapidly increased China’s trade with the EU and European countries.
EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said earlier today that the EU’s relationship with China will be calibrated according to China’s relationship with Russia and its involvement in the war in Ukraine.
The paper about the index can be found here.
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