Investigating the Impact of Health and Environmental Standards on Exports: The Case Of Egyptian Agro-Food Exports to The EU

This study aims at assessing the impact of EU Health and Environment (H&E) standards on Egyptian agro-food exports. Two objectives were addressed, namely: understanding the extent to which agro-food exports to the EU are subject to H&E trade barriers and investigating the impact of H&E standards imposed by the EU on export performance of Egyptian firms in the agro-food sector. The results of the survey were analyzed descriptively and quantitatively. The study showed that a considerable percentage of agro-food exports to the EU are subject to SPS restrictions in terms of the frequency ratio of detentions and the percentage of the value of total agro-food exports to the EU. Nevertheless, the conventional general argument that H&E standards impede trade and are consequently a disguised form of NTBs, can not be simply accepted. The findings of the econometric analysis showed that H&E standards exert a significant positive effect on export performance of firms. Both awareness of firms in terms of complying with H&E standards and costs of compliance as well as importing market restrictions related to H&E standards had a significant positive impact on the export performance of the firms in the sample. Nevertheless, many domestic and external institutional constraints exist that deprive exporters from achieving optimum benefits from compliance.