Abstract
The European Union (EU) is characterized by a high level of openness to trade, consequently increasing its member countries’ vulnerability to external shocks coming from the rapidly changing global environment. The paper’s objective was to compare and evaluate the factors of the EU agribusiness, its vulnerability and its measurement tools, and consequently to create subgroupings within EU member countries with different levels of vulnerability to exogenous shocks. The study hypothesized that the EU is not a homogenous unit regarding its trade sensitivity and vulnerability. It analyzed this phenomenon using data of recognized international institutions. Its method was a multi-criteria analysis with summative scaling. The assessment of the analysis was provided by the linear aggregation of 19 relevant vulnerability-influencing parameters, including climate change risk and political stability. The study results confirmed the hypothesis of the EU heterogeneity and identified four groups of member countries with different levels of the vulnerability to global shocks. It can improve an understanding of the agrarian sector position within the EU economy and a more precise re-formulation of its Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) priorities under the new conditions requiring the comprehensive resilience of the sector.
Highlights
The scenarios of the future global economic development within the framework of actual crisis development look very uncertain
It can improve an understanding of the agrarian sector position within the European Union (EU) economy and a more precise re-formulation of its Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) priorities under the new conditions requiring the comprehensive resilience of the sector
The study comprehensively assessed the vulnerability of the agricultural sector trade within the EU on two levels, as aggregated data at the level of the whole EU and at the level of individual economies according to several groups of indicators as follows: 1. Macro-economically, where the focus is on key parameters in this area, such as GDP, GDP per capita and openness of the economy; 2
Summary
The scenarios of the future global economic development within the framework of actual crisis development look very uncertain. The higher probability looks in favor of the latter options because of the recent coronavirus global crisis, and because the follow-up adaptation processes will be stressing the topic of de-globalization even more, being the subject of the most actual discussion, e.g., by Keen [2]. It raised the more general question of economic vulnerability to exogenous shocks as an additional factor promoting this tendency. A relatively new issue influencing the changing global economic and political development that will modify the future conditions of economic and social development is the environmental and climate change mitigation currently represented and promoted by many world politicians
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