Thus the trade openness of the euro area has increased rather markedly through time, especially since the early 1990s, and is growing more rapidly than in either the USA or Japan.
In particular, trade volumes have also expanded strongly for the euro area (from 33 % of GDP over the period 1997-2000 to 38 % of GDP over the period 2001-2006 ; over the same periods, figures for the US stand at 24 % and 25 % and figures for Japan stand at 21 % and 23 %), with export and import volumes continually and rapidly outpacing the growth rate of GDP over the past quarter of a century (Chart 2a and 2b).