Australian producers to keep prosecco, feta and parmesan as European Union trade deal doomed
by MaleficentParfait863
Australian producers to keep prosecco, feta and parmesan as European Union trade deal doomed
by MaleficentParfait863
8 comments
Article:
– **A massive trade deal with the European Union looks doomed as negotiations break down**
– **Trade Minister Don Farrell plans to walk away from the talks in Osaka due to an unsatisfactory offer**
– **Despite the potential benefits, disagreements persist over market access for Australian products and naming rights**
A massive trade deal with the European Union appears all but doomed after “endgame” negotiations between the two sides collapsed before they even began.
Trade Minister Don Farrell was due to hold talks with his EU counterpart in Osaka on Monday but told negotiators he was walking away from the deal — for the second time in three months — because the offer on the table is still not good enough.
“I came to Osaka with the intention to finalise a trade agreement with the European Union,” he said.
“Unfortunately, we’ve not been able to make progress.
“Negotiations will continue and I’m hopeful that one day we’ll be able to sign a deal that benefits both Australia and our European friends.”
The EU is a massive, high-income trading bloc of 445 million people and is one of the few markets with whom Australia currently has no free trade deal.
As a result, the EU imposes strict quotas and high tariffs on Australian agricultural imports which negotiators have been trying to remove or, at the very least, substantially reduce.
In a statement, EU Ambassador to Australia, Gabriele Visentin, “regretted” the lack of progress made in Osaka, saying “there was optimism that a deal was within reach”.
“Our negotiating teams made good progress over the recent weeks, including in the days leading up to the Osaka meeting,” the Ambassador said.
“The European Commission stands ready to continue negotiations.”
Five years after talks began, Australian farmers say the existing offer is a “dud”, arguing it barely improves market access for sugar, red meat and dairy and would, in fact, impose conditions or European-mandated restrictions on local farming practices.
The other major sticking point has been EU demands for Australia to give up naming rights to hundreds of products – including prosecco, parmesan and feta – to protect so-called “geographical indications”.
Talks have been deadlocked since July when Senator Farrell walked away from Brussels empty-handed, but he was holding out some hope that European negotiators would come to Osaka with an improved offer.
However, Agriculture Minister Murray Watt said the European side had “not budged significantly” since then and expressed frustration about its notoriously protectionist market for agriculture.
“They have not been prepared to put on the table a significantly better offer than what they’ve offered before,” he said.
Negotiating with us (EU) must be a nightmare.
Sounds like a protectionist market in EU which denies the lower income consumer access to reasonable prices. I am no economist but detected financial frauds for 15 years. Something stinks here.
“Anglos” complain about intellectual property theft when it comes to china but have no problem appropriating agricultural products, just stick to your vegemite and bleached poultry
“sugar, red meat and dairy” Why would you try to ship this stuff from Australia to the EU, a place as far away as possible on this planet?
This should be forbidden solely for ecological reasons.
Why does this seem like a negotiating tactic? You generally don’t do a media blitz when something both sides want goes tits up.
As an Australian, believe me, our products which carry the name, are nowhere near as good as their European counterparts. Our Fetta is awful, I never buy it (Greek fetta is infinitely superior), our Parmesan – also kinda shit, I buy the Italian one, and our Prosecco is also not that great.
You guys should be glad it fell through.
I don’t get why Anglo countries are so focused on making shameless copies of agricultural products. Like, can’t they just name their cheese parmeman or some other single letters changes just so people know it’s not the original stuff? Shamelessly copying whole names and trying to sell it by flooding the market is just scummy. It’s as if EU made some cheap iphone copy with the same logo and so on then flooded US with it. I wonder if the US and other anglo countries would be happy about that. And the only argument is that “its just a food” while iphones are “actual intellectual property as they are advanced.”