Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström and Australian trade minister Steven Ciobo agreed during a phone call on Thursday 6 April on a scoping exercise ahead of negotiations over an EU-Australia free-trade agreement.
Preliminary talks were carried out throughout 2016 to define the domains to be covered and the level of ambition of a future bilateral free-trade deal.
The European Commission is currently carrying out an impact assessment on a possible trade deal and its implications for the EU economy. The study takes into account the agreed scope, new opportunities the agreement could create for EU businesses, as well as sensitivities in the farming sector.
In a following stage, the Commission will ask Member States for the authorisation to launch formal negotiations and for the specific negotiating directives.
The president of the European Council, Donald Tusk, the president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, and the Australian prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, expressed in November 2015 their shared commitment to advance towards an EU-Australia trade agreement (see EUROPE 11431).
The EU is Australia's third largest trading partner after China and Japan, and Australia is the EU’s nineteenth biggest trade partner for goods.
Bilateral trade in goods totalled €45.5 billion in 2016 (of which €32.4 billion was EU exports) and trade in services totalled €29.3 billion in 2015 (including €19.8 billion in EU exports).
The EU’s foreign direction investment (FDI) in Australia totalled €145.8 billion as of the end of 2015, with Australian FDI in the EU totalling €120.7 billion. (Original version in French by Emmanuel Hagry)