EU Enlargement Implications on the New Member States Agri-food Trade

In the paper dynamic gravity models are estimated for the agricultural trade of six new EU Member States (the Czech Republic, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia) with selected countries and trade groupings between 1996 and 2005. In general, we find low income elasticities and high price elasticities of import demand for agricultural commodities. The lagged values for trade were highly significant. The accession to the EU increased the new Member States’ exports, but had less impact on their imports. The new Member States have gained significantly from liberalized access to the EU agri-food market