Assessing the Implications of EU Enlargement for CEEC Agri-food Trade Specialisation

The goal of the paper is to analyse agri-food trade specialisation in seven Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs) with their trade groupings over the period 2000-2005, prior to and after their accession to the EU. For these CEECs, we found high agri-food trade specialisation in a relatively small number of commodities. The most competitive commodities in trade with all trade groupings other than the EU-15 were marked by a fairly high level of processing. Over the analysed period the CEE countries did not maintain positions of the most competitive commodities, but at the same time they improved positions of a number of previously uncompetitive commodities. The competitiveness of CEEC agrifood trade commodities declined over the period analysed.