The globalization is a trend. When industries develop their global business landscape, they usually meet various trade barriers. Trade barriers include tariff and non-tariff barriers. As a country wants to benefit from international trade, it may apply preferential trading agreements, which may later facilitate integration, for example: the European Union. The thesis takes three small and medium sized manufacturers as case study. The purpose is to explore whether a third country would encounter more trade barriers when trying to enter the European market. In the meantime, the study investigates to what extent the European Union has grown into so-called ?Fortress Europe ?. The research results show that on the one hand the European Union indeed uses various non-tariff trade barriers (mostly technical trade barriers) to discourage the third countries to enter the European market. On the other hand European Union has done it best to extinguish the trade barriers among the member states. There fore, the study can conclude that the European Union has treated the third countries unfairly in the respect of trade.
