Thursday, March 28, 2024

EU makes a galling offer

Avatar photo
The European Union is pressing New Zealand to drop the use of some cheese names in free-trade talks but is refusing to open its own dairy markets to increased competition in return.
Reading Time: 2 minutes

Negotiators met for the third round of talks in Brussels last week.

NZ’s lead negotiator Martin Harvey said the talks had made progress since being launched in July last year and the EU had already tabled an offer on agricultural market access.

“The EU has made us an offer but it is not satisfactory.

“We are going to have to see more from the EU to unlock some of the other areas of the negotiations.”

It is understood the EU is offering to maintain the status quo with high tariffs severely limiting NZ dairy exports to the continent remaining in place.

NZ exporters pay a €700 a tonne tariff on butter exports to the EU up to 74,693 tonnes and €1896 a tonne for exports in excess of that quota limit.

For cheese a €170 a tonne tariff is levied for exports up to 11,000 tonnes and €1400 a tonne for anything more.

The quotas mean NZ is largely excluded from competing to supply the 2m tonnes of butter and 9m tonnes of cheese consumed annually by EU member states.

Dairy Companies Association chairman Malcolm Bailey said the EU’s offer to merely maintain current market access is particularly galling given the demands it was placing on the NZ dairy industry to give up the use of European cheese names known as Geographic Indications or GIs.

Bailey said he is struggling to reconcile the offer with recent statements from European officials claiming to be considering replicating the EU’s 2016 deal with Canada in its talks with NZ.

Under that deal Canada agreed to preserve the use of names such as feta and parmesan reggiano for the exclusive use of European producers in its domestic market in return for improved access to EU consumer markets for Canadian dairy exports.

“If they start talking that sort of deal then we have got to take notice and really think hard but at this stage it is a pretty easy equation if they are asking for something and offering nothing,” Bailey said.

The Government’s agricultural trade envoy Mike Petersen said the EU’s position is all the more disappointing given the willingness of the NZ side to hear it out when it came its views on GIs.

That contrasts with the position of the Australians who are also in the middle of negotiations with the EU for a free-trade deal and are refusing to even discuss the Europeans’ demands on GIs.

“It is probably what I expected, to be honest, and we are just going to have to work our way through this,” Petersen said.

Both sides have said they hope to reach a deal by the end of the year. 

Total
0
Shares
People are also reading