Agriculture in the Australia–EU economic and trade relationship

Abstract

Following the collapse of the Doha Development Agenda, two dominant trends have emerged in the international system of trade. The first is the proliferation of bilateral and regional free trade agreements¹ (FTAs) as an ‘operational second best’ approach to multilateral regulation (Bonciu & Moldoveanu 2014). Such agreements are second best because they impose significant transaction costs on the international system of trade (i.e. exporters can be forced to handle sometimes dozens of different regulatory regimes concurrently), and they only occasionally produce significant trade gains in those areas that are particularly sensitive such as in agriculture and labour-intensive manufactured products (WTO