The Role of Quality Management in the Context of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) : The Case of the Polish Agri-Food Sector

Since 2013, the European Union (EU) is negotiating with the United States of America (US) a Free Trade Agreement (FTA ), the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTI P). A controversial topic in the negotiations are the different quality standards in the agri-food sectors of both negotiating partners. In order to put into force a FTA all the EU Member States have to agree to the implementation of the contract. Poland has been a full EU Member State since 1 May 2004 and gained a strong position within the EU. Thus, the importance of this EU Member State is of great relevance to the EU's trade policy. The main objective of this article is to analyse Poland's trading position and its domestic interests. The study primarily aimed at investigating the awareness of the TTI P in the agri-food sector with focus on the quality standards of this industry. There has been no in-depth discussion of this sensitive issue within Polish companies of the sector, yet. In particular, the study identified an uncertainty regarding the application and interpretation of international standards in cross-border customer-supplier relationships of food supply chains. For this reason, it is recommended to define these uncertainties and develop proposals for the harmonization and exploitation of synergies. In summary, the results have relevance for the sector