Agricultural trade in the Mediterranean area: actual framework and mid-tem perspectives

The Barcelona Declaration’s objective of establishing a free trade area in the Mediterranean region by the year 2010 is felt as a menace by the Southern European farmers because of the increasing import fiows from non E.U. Mediterranean countries (MEDs). In order to evaluate to what extent these fears are reasonable, we try to analyse the agri-food trade flows between the E.U. and the MEDs and to make some mid-term conjectures on their evolution with a special focus on Mediterranean productions. In particular, we argue that European farmers are likely to face a scenario characterised by the lowering of the trade barriers and the change in the nature of the comparative advantage in agriculture. In such a perspective, it is likely that a greater amount of MED “sensitive products” could be profitably exported into the E.U. markets with negative consequences on the European producers. On the other side, these effects could be partly compensated by the growing demand for quality that comes up from the rapid changes in consumers’ preference and retail’s structure. These considerations should lead European producers to consider the liberalization process as an opportunity to constantly increase the productivity and to improve the quality of their productions.