Our trade talks with Europe and Britain are set to become climate talks

Climate change is set to become an inescapable part of negotiations now underway over an Australia-European Union free trade agreement, and also negotiations over the Australia-UK agreement necessitated by Britain’s exit from the European Union. 

Foreign Minister Marise Payne meets UK Foreign
Secretary Dominic Raab in Canberra on February 6.

Both agreements are needed to help shore up the world trading system which has been without an effective enforcement system following the decision of the Trump administration to withdraw support from the World Trade Organisation. 

In public, the major issue in the EU negotiations has been its determination to enforce so-called “geographical indications”, which limit the use of common names for products such as “champagne”, “feta” and “prosecco” to products made in those places, over and against our access to the wealthy EU market.

Read the story from The Conversation by Bruce Wilson and Chloe Ward - “Our trade talks with Europe and Britain are set to become climate talks.”