Trade barriers and European imports of seafood products: a quantitative assessment

Two opposite principles are guiding the common commercial policy in Europe: the community preference and the security of supply for the European market. During the market crisis of 1993-1994 in France when the prices dropped down, fishermen asked for more protection in order to reduce fish imports. This paper deals with the impact of import protection on the European imports of fishery products. A quantitative assessment is developed through a panel data import function. The main conclusion is that import protection has little effect on imports. However, the results show a different impact of trade barriers on seafood imports according to the level of processing; the protection is expectedly more effective for processed fish than for primary goods, because trade barriers are higher. Moreover, whatever the commodities, other effects appear to be far more influential than trade barriers on import levels. These are price effects (including exchange rate), or the distance between countries.