Grouping of the EU candidate countries and eastern partnership countries according to the degree of self-sufficiency in basic food products

The article compares the European Union (EU) candidate countries (CC) and the Eastern Partnership countries (EPC) in terms of their self-sufficiency in basic food products by analysing the average consumption of these products between 1992 and 2013. The countries were grouped according to their self-sufficiency ratios by Ward’s method of cluster analysis. Studies have shown that in the first group of countries in 1992-1999 and 2000-2013 there were primarily Albania, Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia and Macedonia, and they had the lowest self-sufficiency ratios for most products compared to the second and the third group of countries. In both periods, in the second group there were Azerbaijan and Turkey, which have the highest self-sufficiency ratio for fruit, and in the third group there were mainly Belarus, Moldova, Serbia and Ukraine. These countries were characterised by surplus in the production of most foods. Research showed that in the second period under consideration, Montenegro moved to a group of countries with a lower level of self-sufficiency. Studies proved that during the period under investigation the increase in the self-sufficiency of these countries resulted from greater production, lesser loss during production and lower consumption of the products under analysis.