International Competitiveness of the Food Industry in European Union Member States

Abstract

The primary purpose of the study was to assess the international competitiveness of the food industry in EU member states in trade to the world market and its changes in the years 2005-2012. The food industry was defined on the basis of the aggregation of departments at the two-digit level 01-09 and 11 of the Standard International Trade Classification SITC Rev. 3. The study uses the following indexes based on foreign trade. The share of export in the global market, the revealed comparative advantage index RCA, in index of import coverage with export and index the Grubel-Lloyd index of intra-industry trade were calculated. Due to the numerous aspects of the competitiveness phenomenon, the aggregate variable was also used for a complex assessment. A synthetic measure of international competitiveness was developed on the basis of the factors referred to above. Data published in the UN Comtrade database was used for the calculations. The conducted research indicates that the international competitive position of the food industry of particular EU member states was diverse. The highest places in the competitiveness ranking were occupied by states of the old EU, such as: the Netherlands, France, Spain and Denmark. Only their order changed, depending on the adopted time criterion. A particular improvement was observed among Central-Eastern European countries which belong to new member states. However, it mainly resulted from the low level of export in the initial period. On this basis, we may state that we should not expect significant changes in the level of international competitiveness of the food industry in particular EU member states in the future (maintaining the present conditions).