Abstract
The agricultural matter has always played an important role in holding back the Euro-Mediterranean integration process due to the strong complementarity of the agricultures of the coastal countries which share excellent products including citrus fruits. The main goal of this paper is to understand the growth dynamics of the citriculture in the countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea. Through the application of the dynamic formulation of the Shift and Share Analysis it has been possible to analyse the trend of the amount of harvested citrus production, in physical and economic terms, in the last fifteen years, and above all which components, structural and competitive, have mainly influenced these performances. The results of the analysis highlight on the whole a positive trend of the citrus fruits sector in the Mediterranean coastal countries which, although characterized by an adequate productive structure, suffer in some cases from competitiveness limits. A clear dualism emerges among the coastal countries: on the one hand, the North-African and the Near-East countries –extra-EU members– show a dynamic and competitive citrus production mainly thanks to the implementation of effective government policies consistent with the aim to increase the competitiveness of the sector; on the other hand, other countries, mainly EU members, are significantly late in competitiveness, showing their inability to reorganize themselves in the direction shown by the demand trend and the agricultural policies.
Highlights
The Mediterranean Sea has always represented an area of strategic interest for several world geopolitical powers and for European Union (EU) in particular, which has made it one of the main protagonists of its foreign policy (Castellini & Pisano, 2009)
The results of the analysis, both in terms of value and volume of citrus fruits production, show the good position for Turkey, as well as for Algeria, Egypt and Syria which present a good dynamics mainly due to the positive location factors. In these countries the citrus fruits sector plays a key role in economic terms both because traditionally integrated in the productive and economic texture and because it is effectively supported by national Governments
As Zenginoglu & Dijk (2006) highlight, the development of the sector follow the trends of the world citrus fruit market such as in the case of mandarins, whose increase in production is due to a growing demand for easy-pealers, or grapefruit for which supply growth is attributable to the favourable export opportunities
Summary
The Mediterranean Sea has always represented an area of strategic interest for several world geopolitical powers and for European Union (EU) in particular, which has made it one of the main protagonists of its foreign policy (Castellini & Pisano, 2009). This has led to intensify the bounds with the coastal countries through the subscription of several kinds of agreements within a political approach which, in the last 50 years, has deeply changed. In the early stage of the negotiations the agricultural issue has been deliberately neglected for the high sensitivity of some agri-food production.
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