Sourcing Agricultural Produce from Mediterranean Countries to the EU

Successive Association Agreements between the EU and its Mediterranean Partner Countries (MPCs) aimed mostly at fostering trade liberalization. The analysis of agricultural trade flows between both areas has been traditionally approached according to geographical proximity and political relations via quantitative trade models. Available evidence reveals serious difficulties to conduct thorough analysis with the mentioned models. An alternative analytical avenue would be the use of qualitative approaches linked to Global Value Chain analysis. This book focuses on analyzing the buyer side of the value chains for the main agricultural products sourced from MPCs to the EU, taking Spain as a representative case. The analysis provides primary information for better profiling the opportunities and constraints of these flows, and deriving implications to improve the efficiency of the target value chains. No previous references about the topic investigated were found in the specialized literature, which makes this research probably the first attempt to analyze Euro-Mediterranean agricultural trade dynamics using the value chain approach from the buyer market perspective.