ABSTRACT
This chapter summarizes the results of the third part of our inquiry to give a more general answer to the question how European tariff policy affected the economic integration of Europe between 1927 and 1931. The years before the beginning of the world economic crisis in the autumn of 1929 and the period afterwards up to the end of the year 1931 must be sharply separated. The first period, in which, between 1925 and 1929, an extensive reconstruction of world and European economy took place, has been aptly called the 'Period of Reconstruction'. The chapter discusses of the export problems of the three Mediterranean countries concluded the series of detailed inquiries into the export structures and actual tariff levels of post-War Europe between 1927 and 1931. In agrarian Europe they consisted of a heavy rise of general tariff levels throughout the European East, South-East, and in Spain, effected mainly by the sharp increases in industrial duties.
