COMPETITIVE POSITION OF POLAND AND MERCOSUR COUNTRIES IN BEEF EXPORTS TO THE EUROPEAN UNION IN THE CONTEXT OF THE EU-MERCOSUR AGREEMENT

The aim of the article is to assess the competitive position of Poland and the Mercosur countries in exports of beef and beef products to the European Union market, as well as to identify those product groups in which their revealed comparative advantages overlap. This makes it possible to indicate potential areas of intensified competition under the conditions of trade liberalisation resulting from the EU-Mercosur agreement. The analysis covers exports of 12 product groups in the beef sector at the six-digit level of the Combined Nomenclature (CN). The study employs the revealed comparative advantage (RCA) index and a competitiveness matrix for exports from Poland and the Mercosur countries to the EU market in the period 2022-2024. The analysis is complemented by an assessment of the commodity structure of EU imports, the beef market balance in Mercosur and the EU, as well as a synthetic analysis of the provisions of the EU-Mercosur agreement concerning the liberalisation of beef imports. The results indicate that the Mercosur countries have stronger comparative advantages in beef exports to the EU than Poland. However, competition is selective in nature and is concentrated mainly in segments of fresh or chilled boneless beef, frozen boneless beef, and processed or preserved beef. In the remaining product groups, comparative advantages are more often observed on the side of Poland. This implies that the effects of trade liberalisation may be concentrated in selected market segments, and their importance for Poland will depend primarily on the extent to which competition intensifies in the most sensitive product groups.