This study examines the impact of the Association Agreement between the European Union and Ukraine on agriculture trade and agriculture businesses in the region. We argue that the Association Agreement is a Regional Trade Agreement in accordance with provisions of the GATT, and thereby apply established arguments of the positive and negative effects of the Association Agreement. To analyse the impact and establish a trend, we have utilised data from EU’s agricultural imports from Ukraine, Ukraine’s agriculture production output, and EU exports from one of Ukraine’s largest grain exporters. The agriculture commodities used to represent the agriculture data in the analysis are corn, wheat, seed oils, rapeseed, and sunflower seeds. To support our discussion of the trends depicted in the data, we have applied the principles of the Theory of Free Trade, and its opposing theory, Protectionism. The findings suggest that the Association Agreement has facilitated a policy shift in the Ukrainian agriculture industry towards EU and away from Russia. However, we cannot limit out the possibility that this shift was inevitable with or without the Association Agreement considering Russia’s aggression towards Ukraine since 2014. Ukrainian agriculture exports to the EU have gradually increased since the implementation of the Association Agreement, and we infer that the Association Agreement plays a role in this increase. Our findings also suggest that agriculture businesses in the frontline five countries have been negatively impacted by the Autonomous Trade Measures which were introduced under the Association Agreement, but we argue that this was never the intention of the legislation. Lastly, we find that Multilateralism is achieved through a regionalist policy in this specific case, but that due to unforeseen circumstances does not reach its full potential.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uu-534147 |
| Date | January 2024 |
| Creators | Dalén, Aron, Majumdar, Gaurav |
| Publisher | Uppsala universitet, Företagsekonomiska institutionen |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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