The Australian Prime Minister together with the President of the European Council and the President of the European Commission agreed in a joint statement on 15 November 2015 to start the process towards a comprehensive and high-quality Free Trade Agreement (FTA).

Australian and EU officials will now begin bilateral discussions on the next steps to launch negotiations.  As part of this process, DFAT is seeking submissions from interested stakeholders. The due date for submissions is 5pm on 26 February 2016.

Key interests and benefits:

• A comprehensive, high-quality Australia-EU FTA would help to ensure our trade and investment relationship reaches its full potential
• An Australia-EU FTA would remove barriers to trade in goods
• An Australia-EU FTA could expand services linkages and investment ties
• An Australia-EU FTA could enhance regulatory cooperation in specific sectors of interest to business.

Stakeholders are invited to consider and comment on the commercial, economic, regional and other impacts that could be expected to arise from an Australia-EU FTA. In your submission, you may wish to focus on specific market access challenges and other issues of importance in doing business with the EU or EU member states. Especially helpful would be information on tariff and non-tariff barriers to goods and services trade and barriers to investment.

Observations based on past experience in the EU or in other markets that may have some bearing upon a future FTA would be received with interest.

Alternatively, you may wish to raise more general issues associated with the impact of a possible Australia-EU FTA on Australia.

For further information, including on the submission process, visit:

http://dfat.gov.au/trade/agreements/aeufta/Pages/aeufta.aspx