European consumers will see more Australian beef on their tables. A new trade deal reduces most export tariffs on Australian goods, allowing up to 30,000 tonnes of Australian beef to enter in the EU market every year. While it faces relatively little opposition in Brussels, Australian farmers are furious, calling it the “worst ever free trade agreement”.
The National Farmers’ Federation (NFF), representing Australian farmers, said the deal did not give them meaningful access to the EU market․ “What the Australian government has accepted today appears to offer no material change for key agricultural commodities as what the government rightly rejected in October 2023‚” NFF president Hamish McIntyre said․
“We are concerned the EU has offered sub-par access for Australian producers while potentially needing to deploy billion-dollar subsidies to get their producers to accept the deal․”
Quotas fall short of industry expectations
The agreement was released Tuesday after eight years of protracted negotiations. It will allow Australian farmers export an additional 30‚600 tonnes of beef and 25‚000 tonnes of lamb. However‚ this was still far below the 50‚000 tonnes of beef and 67‚000 tonnes of lamb that the industry had called for. And well below similar agreements already in place with countries with existing EU free-trade agreements․
Chair of the Australia-EU Red Meat Market Access Taskforce Andrew McDonald described it as an “outrageous discrepancy“. “To land a deal so far below what other suppliers have secured is genuinely bewildering‚” he said․
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Cattle Australia chair Garry Edwards accused the government of leading “an apparently disingenuous trade negotiation”. He said: “The quantities agreed are pathetic‚ with headline trivial volumes not reached for ten years․”
Mercosur row intensifies in Europe
EU officials view the agricultural aspects of the EU-Australia agreement as less politically sensitive than those negotiated with the South American Mercosur trade bloc. Although both agreements raise fears of competition among European farmers‚ Brussels had previously faced less opposition to imports of Australian meat than other types of agricultural goods․
Rather than a deal with Mercosur‚ countries such as Ireland‚ which have been among the most sceptical of Mercosur‚ would prefer to secure a trade deal with Australia‚ in part due to regulatory differences. France‚ another Mercosur critic‚ has moderated its rhetoric due to Australia’s relatively high phytosanitary and food safety standards․
European farming organisations have voiced concerns that imports from Mercosur countries, which do not face the same restrictions and minimum requirements as those imposed in the EU, will weaken local production.
