Agricultural Sustainable Development Goals in the EU: The Role of Global Value Chains

: Background Global value chains (GVCs) have connected food production, trade, resource use, and environmental pressures across countries. In the European Union, these links are closely related to progress on food security, clean energy, responsible consumption and production, and climate action. However, most existing studies focus on single sustainability outcomes, while less is known about how agricultural GVC participation relates to several SDG dimensions simultaneously. Methods This study uses a pooled country-year dataset for 27 EU member states from 2015 to 2024 to examine the associations between agricultural GVC participation and SDG-related outcomes. Multiple Factor Analysis was used to explore the structure of the SDG indicators and GVC participation variables. Latent Variable Partial Least Squares (LV-PLS) modelling was then applied to estimate associations between the GVC participation construct and five SDG-related constructs. Results The MFA results explained 43.46% of the variance across the SDG and GVC indicators and identified differentiated GVC participation patterns. In the LV-PLS model, the overall GVC participation construct was negatively associated with Zero Hunger (β=-0.253, p<0.001), positively associated with Clean Energy dependency (β = 0.415, p < 0.001), negatively associated with Responsible Consumption and Production (β = -0.512, p < 0.001), positively associated with Climate Action (Environment) (β = 0.377, p < 0.001), and negatively associated with Climate Action (Economy) (β = -0.201, p < 0.001). Conclusions The findings suggest that the sustainability implications of agricultural GVC participation differ across participation patterns. Forward-oriented countries should prioritize R&D investments with higher value-added green exports, while backward-oriented countries should pay greater attention to reducing dependence on imported inputs and energy. These results suggest that EU agricultural and trade policies should distinguish between participation types, with greater attention to reducing input dependence in backward-oriented countries and supporting green upgrading in forward-oriented ones.