While international value chains have been present in planned economies for several
decades, their integration into global value chains (GVCs) began in the 1990s. In
this study, we investigated the evolution of downstream value chains in Eastern Europe
(including the Balkan countries, Moldova, and Ukraine) from 1995, by applying Wang's
UIBE methodology and the Eora database. The results of this study suggest that European
Union (EU) membership indisputably has a positive impact on GVC embeddedness, whereas
non-EU economies are still integrated in their own local downstream value chains.
We further investigated the automotive sector in the Central and Eastern European
countries and demonstrate how deeper integration into GVCs prompted the emergence
of assembly activities.
