Economic relations between Australia and the European Union (EU) have always been strong, but they have not always been easy. They have been difficult for Australia because it associated the EU with the loss of the UK preferential export market on its entry into the then European Economic Community. And because Australia associated the EU with the original Common Agricultural Policy, which combined subsidies for agricultural production and high agricultural tariffs to make Australian agricultural exports not competitive. They have been difficult for the EU also. Australia developed a biosecurity system to protect its agricultural sector: quarantine requirements and food safety standards made the importation of EU plant and animal products too costly. Yet Australia and the EU need each other. The EU, which is Australia's largest services trade and investment partner, supplies the business services that drive a knowledge economy and provides the credit to finance economic development. Correspondingly, the EU needs Australia both as a commercial base in Asia and as a reliable energy supplier. This article analyses the drivers and difficulties in the economic relationship between Australia and the EU as they start negotiations for a free trade agreement.

Safety standards can function as non-tariff barriers to trade. Canada is a large exporter of goods and so it has an interest in the regulation of safety standards, both at the multilateral level through its membership of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and, most especially, at the bilateral and regional level through its Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs). Canada has signed PTAs with provisions that go beyond the obligations of WTO Members under the Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures and the Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade. This article analyses the nature and enforceability of WTO-plus provisions on sanitary and phytosanitary standards (SPS) as well as product standards (TBT) in Canada's PTAs, from the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between Canada, Mexico, and the United States to the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) between Canada and the European Union. First, it finds that the inclusion of WTO-plus SPS and TBT provisions in Canada's PTAs is a relatively recent practice that is still in development. Only about half of Canada's PTAs contain WTO-plus SPS and TBT provisions and, those treaties that do, commonly concern institutions for regulatory cooperation and information exchange arrangements, without much commitment to harmonization. Secondly, it finds that nearly half of the SPS and TBT provisions in Canada's PTAs are unenforceable. They either are in a language that is too imprecise for enforcement or do not allow access to a dispute settlement mechanism. Thirdly, it finds that, by global standards, most of Canada's PTAs are modest in their approach to SPS and TBT issues, with NAFTA and CETA as key exceptions. The article concludes that the extent to which regulatory convergence occurs on safety standards for Canada is dependent more on political cooperation between the parties than on the nature and enforceability of SPS and TBT provisions in its PTAs.

The European Union (EU) is Australia's largest economic partner. It has been so for more than twenty-five years. Yet, the EU remains the only major trading and investment partner with which Australia does not have an Economic Integration Agreement, either in force or under negotiation. This article analyses the legal and policy issues that affect their trade and investment relations. Despite the existence of an EU-Australia Partnership Framework, a declaration in the process of revision into an agreement, the article considers that attention diversion from larger trading and investment partners, for the EU, and opposition to the distortive effects of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), for Australia, are the two main reasons for the low priority that each party attaches to bilateral trade and investment liberalization with the other. Nonetheless, an Economic Integration Agreement is, it argues, a mutually beneficial strategy: there remain duties and other restrictive regulations of commerce on trade between the EU and Australia that are amenable to bilateral elimination in the interest of further trade creation without the subsequent potential for any significant trade diversion. This article, aware of the difficulty of compromise over agriculture, makes a flexible and pragmatic call for a bilateral agreement on trade in services and trade-related investment measures. Services trade and investment are not sensitive areas for either party and an agreement to facilitate them would duly recognize the EU as Australia's largest partner for trade in services and its largest source and destination of foreign direct investment. It concludes that barrier reductions, if not their elimination altogether, in these two non-sensitive areas are likely to make up a significant proportion of the likely benefits of a comprehensive agreement. Their delay (or even loss) might outweigh the possible benefits from barrier reductions to sensitive sectors. Agriculture and other sensitive sectors that require further negotiation over a longer period of time could be the subject of built-in agendas.

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The past two decades have witnessed a proliferation of Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs). This article considers the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf (or Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)) as it investigates the claim that RTAs constitutionalise the norm of free trade in supranational jurisdictions. The article suggests that the GCC Member States should take several major initiatives in order to enhance and strengthen their economic integration. They must now fasten their historically slow pace of economic integration and adhere to the time frame for economic and monetary union. The GCC Member States should learn from the experience of the European Union (EU) and transfer greater levels of national sovereignty to the GCC.