Abstract. The gains or losses of world market shares by individual countries are often considered an index of their trade competitiveness. High trade freeness seems to be an important factor in the EU-27 context for the variation of market shares. In this sense, the present study conducts a structural decomposition analysis applied to export market shares through which the variation of the market share of a country is decomposed into three main effects: the market share effect (MSE), the structural market effect (SME) and the market adaptation effect (MAE). The outcomes of the study highlight four main categories of EU countries based on the results of the decomposition analysis.

Keywords: competitiveness; market share; structural decomposition analysis; European Union.