‘Message to Macron’: Australia ready to walk after EU trade deal deadlock

Trade Minister Don Farrell has rejected the European Union’s trade deal proposal, declaring the political bloc must offer greater market access to Australian farmers, as Prime Minister Anthony Albanese declared he would not sign anything that was not in the national interest.

“I will not go back to Australia with the offer that’s currently on the table,” Farrell said on Tuesday, after breaking his leave to dash to Brussels and get the Europeans to budge on their tough agriculture regulations. “I want to secure a fair, long-term agreement that lasts us into the future and is in both of our interests.”

Cattle are fed at the Coomalie Holding Depot in the Northern Territory.Credit: George Steinmetz/New York Times

Albanese said on Tuesday in Germany that he was confident that concerns raised by France over the trade deal “can be worked through”, but he was also willing to walk away.

“My message to [French President Emmanuel] Macron will be that we want to conclude this agreement, but that we won’t be signing up to things that are not in Australia’s national interest,” he said. “In particular, we want access to European markets and we want to have the mutual benefit that comes from free trade between Australia and Europe.”

Albanese will discuss the agreement with Macron on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital, on Wednesday.

“France has raised some issues but I’m confident they can be worked through and I’ll be having an open and constructive discussion with President Macron,” the prime minister said.

“We’re not asking for anything other countries have not received.”

Farrell talked up the possibility of landing a free trade deal by the end of 2022 when he first took on the portfolio in June last year, but negotiations have stalled after the EU refused to increase import quotas for Australian beef, sheep meat, dairy and sugar sufficiently.

EU farm lobby groups in nations such as France and Ireland are politically powerful and implacably opposed to the prospect of cheaper Australian imports. They have also insisted on the imposition of so-called geographic indicators, or naming rights, for products including Parmesan, prosecco and feta – which would force Australian producers to rebadge their products.

Farrell’s rejection of the bloc’s offer was backed by National Farmers Federation chief executive Tony Mahar, who said the EU’s existing deforestation laws – which restrict imports of produce from land cleared for farming – meant Australian farmers needed even greater market access to compensate.

“We are better to walk away than to agree a dud deal,” Mahar said.

Irish Minister for Agriculture Food and the Marine Charlie McConalogue last month urged the bloc to “minimise the additional beef and sheep meat access to be offered to Australia in the context of concluding the current Free Trade Agreement negotiations”.

Separate to trade negotiations, the European Parliament has imposed tough environmental rules on imports that focus on stopping land clearing and forest loss in the countries that supply it with agricultural goods.

Australian farmers argue that “thinning” of vegetation in certain areas, such as mulga country in Queensland, to expand livestock grazing, should not be deemed deforestation.

An analysis of land clearing in Queensland between 2018 and 2020 by the Australian Conservation Foundation, conducted by University of Queensland conservation biologist Martin Taylor, found that the EU’s land clearing rules would bar importation from 260,000 ha of Queensland farmland cleared annually for sheep and beef production.

National Farmers Federation vice president David Jochinke said the federal government should lobby the EU for a carve out from the land-clearing laws for Australian farmers.

“If we’re complying with Australian laws, which are built around Australian conditions, that should be good enough for the EU,” Jochinke said. “The Australian government needs to push that message hard on our behalf.”

However, Wilderness Society Queensland campaigns manager Hannah Schuch said the EU demanding geographic co-ordinates to prove where beef imports were raised meant there was “no possible carve out” for Australian farmers.

“In our discussions with EU officials, they laughed at the prospect of a developed nation like Australia trying to argue it was too complex to carry out this traceability work when they expected developing nations to be able to do it,” Schuch said.

A spokesperson for the Agriculture Department said “Australia shares international concerns about the global rate of deforestation and its impacts on the climate and biodiversity”.

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