Sborník 2009 díl 2. - Fakulta informatiky a managementu - Univerzita ...

EVALUATION OF THE COMPETITIVENESS OF POLISH FOOD
PRODUCERS AFTER THE ACCESSION TO THE EUROPEAN UNION
Iwona Szczepaniak
Institute of Agriculture and Food Economics – National Research Institute, Warsaw
i.szczepaniak@ierigz.waw.pl
Key words:
Competitiveness – agro-food sector – foreign trade – export, import
Abstract:
Competition is one of the most important mechanisms of contemporary social and economic
life. Even not very long time ago competition concerned mostly regional or national
markets, while geographical factors and institutional barriers had significantly limited
international competition created by single states or groups of states. In the recent
years, however, the process of accelerated system transition, as well as the progress of
globalisation and international integration processes led to a dramatic change of such reality.
At present, competition is very rarely limited only to a given country or geographical
region and nearly all economic entities must deal with a strong international competition.
Taking the abovementioned definition as a baseline for an evaluation of the competitiveness
of Polish food producers after Poland’s entry to the EU the analysis of the
outcome of Poland-EU foreign trade with agri-food products in the 2003-2008 period
was performed. The study has been conducted taking the global development of foreign
trade with these products as a background. In addition, the analysis of the export orientation
indicator in the main branches of food industry was used in order to evaluate the
competitiveness of Polish food producers after the entry to the EU.
Introduction
Accession of Poland into European Common Market (ECM) implied the entry of Polish
economy into the free trade area. This meant abolition of custom duties and other trading
restrictions in the turnover with other Member States, as well as including our country
into external EU tariff and trade agreements entered into by the UE before the date
of enlargement and also terminating all trade agreements entered into by Poland. The
removal of all limitations concerning the trade in agri-food products made it possible for
such products to be exported without limits into the other Member States’ markets. At
the same time, goods produced in that counties may freely compete with Polish products
in the Polish markets.
Now the basic problem of Polish food industry is following: will the unavoidable lose
of some part of own market be compensated – with a certain surplus – by the increased
sales in the markets of other EU Member States. From the formal point of view, the
sufficient condition for placing the agri-food products on the markets of other EU
Member States was meeting by the Polish producers the Union’s sanitary, veterinary,
phytosanitary, animal welfare and environment protection standards. However, the actual
use of the opportunity of increasing the export of Polish food to the EU market de-
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