Australia, a member country of the G20, former British colony and member of the Commonwealth, is already in talks with the United Kingdom to negotiate a free-trade agreement to enter into force after the UK leaves the EU (Brexit), the Australian prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, confirmed on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Hangzhou, on Sunday 4 and Monday 5 September.
Turnbull said that his country had "already been engaged" in talks with the British prime minister, Theresa May, to set in place such an agreement once the UK has left the EU, according to several media sources on Tuesday 6 September.
The talks will start to gather pace, as the Australian trade minister, Steven Ciobo, is to visit London this week for "exploratory discussions on the model of a free-trade agreement", May confirmed on Monday.
The British leader also announced that other countries – India, Mexico, South Korea and Singapore – would also "welcome talks on removing trade barriers" with the United Kingdom following Brexit.
May made no secret of her intentions of taking the opportunity of the Hangzhou summit to present her G20 peers with the trade opportunities that will open up across the world for the United Kingdom after Brexit, reiterating her desire to start bilateral talks now, in order to make her country a "world leader in free-trade" post-Brexit.
This earned her a slight rebuke from the president of the Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, who pointed out on Sunday 4 September that negotiating free-trade agreements was exclusively within the remit of the EU. "I don't like the idea that member states of the EU, including those that are still a member state of the EU, are negotiating free-trade agreements. Such discussions are an exclusive matter for the European Union and we are sticking to it", he said with some asperity.
In Hangzhou, May held talks with the host of the summit, Chinese President Xi Jingping, with a view to "developing a strategic partnership" between the two countries and "continuing the golden age of relations between China and Britain".
Japan, for its part, expressed concern at the uncertainty stemming from Brexit for its companies in the UK, "strongly" calling upon London to minimise any harmful effects.
Finally, the United States, of which the UK is the privileged partner in the EU, acknowledged that it had had "talks" on trade, but the American president, Barack Obama, stressed that negotiations for the free-trade deal with the EU (TTIP) were still the priority. (Original in French by Emmanuel Hagry)