The aim of this contribution is a comparative analysis of the challenges Poland and Greece (and more broadly - CEE-10 and GIPS countries) had to face in the past as latecomers to the European Union and are facing now, in the aftermath of the world financial and economic crisis of 2008-09.

This paper investigates the impact of regional free-trade-area (FTA) agreements on the ability of countries to multilaterally cooperate within an economic environment characterized by trade- flow volatility. We show that the parallel formation of different FTAs leads to a gradual but permanent...