The Economic Impacts of Turkish Accession to the European Union

Half a century has passed and Turkey is no further toward achieving EU membership. Under the mandate of the Barcelona Declaration, EU-Turkish industrial tariffs will be abolished, whilst agro-food protectionism remains largely intact. Consequently, the direct impacts from a hypothetical EU accession scenario will be concentrated in agro-food sectors, whilst their share of economic output in Turkey implies 'secondary' macro impacts. To this end, a computable general equilibrium (CGE) framework is employed to quantitatively reassess full Turkish accession. Unlike previous CGE studies, agriculture, fishing and food sectors are disaggregated, whilst significant advancements to the 'standard' model code are incorporated to capture the vagaries of agricultural factor, input and product markets. In addition, a realistic 'baseline' scenario is constructed including 'up to date' trade and domestic agricultural policy reforms prior to Turkish entry to the EU. The results show that trade-led gains in Turkey are moderated due to tariff liberalisation prior to EU entry, whilst Turkey receives significant budgetary transfers from the CAP budget, which are 'mirrored' as EU-27 costs. With additional migration effects, Turkish (EU-27) production possibilities fall (rise), whilst real income per capita rises (falls).