The purpose of this article is to provide a quantitative assessment of the possible impacts of European enlargement on output, trade flows and welfare of non-member regions with emphasis on agricultural trade. This is done by using version four of the latest Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) database (1995 data) (Hertel, 1997; and McDougall et al., 1998) and a specially tailored global general equilibrium model where attention is paid to modelling the instruments of the CAP and the recent EU reform package proposal (the so-called Agenda 2000 proposal). The focus is on the agricultural sector, as this is where the contentious issues arise. The outline of the article is as follows. A description of the motivation and nature of eastward regional integration is presented first. The economic effects of enlargement and the concerns among the WTO members about preferential trade agreements are then discussed. The final part of the article presents the quantitative analysis undertaken, involving two scenarios; a baseline (1995-2005) followed by a scenario describing the economic effects of EU enlargement.
