**1. Introduction**

Due to the technological developments, behavioral changes, and the recent orientation towards "green" projects and sectors, currently, the European economy is facing significant changes. In this context, the production, commercialization, and trade of food products at the level of the European countries, interconnected with the renewable energy resources used for food production, together with their transport and distribution routes, create the premises for development of sustainable communities.

Sustainability (sustainable development) is not a new concept. In 1987, the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) published the report "Our Common Future" [1], which developed the concept of sustainable development, which involves people's relations with the environment and the responsibilities of present generations to future generations. At the European level, investment programs have been developed to support innovation and research and to provide solutions to the challenges facing national and global food systems, with respect to food consumption and ensuring food security. An overall deterioration of the state of food security at the global level is being witnessing, generated by the emergence of major risk factors, both structural (increasing world population, global warming, degradation of water resources and land with agricultural potential, etc.), and short term (adoption of inadequate policies, erosion of the political–economic role of the states, proliferation of poverty, etc.). To the extent that the current manifestation trends do not change, there are premises for a serious global food crisis, which entails adverse implications for all of the coordinates of global and, implicitly, national and individual security [2]. The gradual transition from linear economy to bioeconomy (the bioeconomy encompasses those parts of the economy that use renewable resources from land and sea, such as crops, forests, fish, animals, and microorganisms, to produce food, materials, and energy [3]) is a strategic goal at the European level. The notion of bioeconomy has grown in importance, both in the research environment, in the public debate, and at the level of political decision-makers, as it is considered as an alternative solution for a di fferent set of problems; strategies/studies were developed as a basis for the construction of a unitary vision on the development, sustainability, and implications of the transition to the bioeconomy. From the European Commission's perspective, the bioeconomy represents an "economy that includes the production of renewable biological resources and their transformation into food, biological, and bioenergy products. This includes the gross added value of agriculture, forestry and fisheries, food, cellulose, and paper production, as well as parts of the chemical, biotechnological, and energy industry" [4]. Other considerations of the bioeconomy are highlighted in certain sectors (e.g., biofuels [5]; biotechnologies [6]; reduced emissions and use of fossil fuels [7]). The studies that were conducted synthesize some views on the bioeconomy, which are included in the following table (Table 1).



Source: [8].

The remaining part of this paper is structured in five sections. Section 1 provides a literature review on bioeconomy and foreign trade in food, focusing on EU countries. Section 2 explains the research methodology of the calculation and presents the econometric methodology, specifically the database, variable, and quantitative methods. The third and fourth sections show the discussion and results of the quantitative findings of the study, and the final section provides concluding remarks and policy recommendations.
