IL PARTENARIATO EURO-MEDITERRANEO E LE PROSPETTIVE DELL’AGROALIMENTARE DEL MEZZOGIORNO D’ITALIA

The Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (EMP), which was initiated in 1995 and re-launched several times over the last few years, has three strategic objec-tives of political, cultural and socio-economic development and integration. In this light, the creation of a free-trade area between the North and South sides of the Mediterranean would act as a key lever to rebalancing the development gap between the two Mediterranean shores as they are characterized by very het-erogeneous territorial and socio-economic conditions and asymmetric global trade exchanges. However, a free-trade area would have a negative impact on those regions such as Southern Italy, which are marked by weaker economic and structural conditions. In this respect, the european market access liberaliza-tion in favour of the Mediterranean Third Countries has lead to a direct compe-tition between the latter and Southern Italy. In fact, as regards some agri-food productions such as oil, fruit and vegetables, these third countries enjoy a com-petitive advantage, resulting from lower production costs despite maintaining the same quality standards. In this context, a fundamental role of agri-food sys-tem in rebalancing european and mediterranean societies and economies is therefore acknowledged. This paper seeks to analyse the impact of a Euro-Mediterranean free-trade area on the agri-food system in Southern Italy and provide new insights into the repositioning strategies, of this area, within a new Euro-Mediterranean sce-nario, which may lead to new opportunities as well as new threats.