The paper analyses the evolution of trade specialisation in Romania and Bulgaria beginning with the mid-1990s to 2012. Two statistical methods are applied: cross-section analysis and the Markov chain technique. These methods are used both to establish a link between different distributions of trade specialisation indicators in time and to find out if Romania and Bulgaria have mainly specialised in competitive or non-competitive products. Although the main acceding countries to European Union had registered an increasing degree of specialisation, our results indicate an opposite trend for the two countries.