COMPETITIVE POSITION OF THE FOOD INDUSTRY OF THE EUROPEAN UNION ON THE GLOBAL MARKET

The conducted research is consistent with commercial trend of the research on competitiveness. The main goal was to assess the competitive position of the food industry of the European Union (EU) on the global market in the period 2000-2013. Used indicators are based on the results achieved in foreign trade: global market share, trade coverage ratio and revealed comparative advantage ratio. The food industry was defined on the basis of the aggregation of the departments 01-09, 11, 4 SITC Rev. 3. According to the research, the EU and the USA were the world's largest exporters of the food industry products. Their importance in the world export decreases slightly in favour of such countries, as China and Brazil. A surplus in food trade achieved by the EU was small, especially as compared to Argentina. The conducted analysis demonstrates that the EU as a whole did not have comparative advantages in trade of food products over the countries not belonging to the Community.