A New Zealand-backed plan to link the European Union and the Indo-Pacific together on trade is gathering pace, says Trade and Investment Minister Todd McClay. PM Luxon raised the possibility of building formal links between the CPTPP and the EU last month, saying the two blocs could jointly “champion rules-based trade and make specific commitments on how that support plays out in practice”.
Speaking to media, McClay said there was “uniform acceptance” among CPTPP members of the value in establishing a formal dialogue on trade rules with both the EU and Asean. There was clear interest in discussions from both groupings, but officials were now working on potential terms of reference for such a dialogue. McClay mentioned the Pacific Islands Forum as an example of outside nations taking part in some policy discussions despite not being official members. “In this case, I think it would be … once a year we meet, probably when the CPTPP ministers meet each year … and we would have a dialogue and a range of [talks] about trade, how to bring down barriers, how to boost trade between the two trading areas.”
Last week, Sweden said it would develop a formal proposal for the EU to join the CPTPP bloc, with Swedish foreign trade minister Benjamin Dousa telling Reuters such a move would “create the biggest free-trade area in the whole world”. However, McClay said he had not been contacted by anyone in the Swedish government, and believed full EU membership of the CPTPP bloc was “very unlikely ever to happen, because it probably doesn’t make a lot of sense”. “It feels to me like they’ve [the EU] got a lot on their plate; equally, many of the countries in the CPTPP already have an agreement of one type or another with them …”
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