Reduction of technical trade barriers – rather than tariff cuts – is the key gain for the dairy sector in the new EU-Australia trade agreement, says Danish agricultural organisation.
A new trade agreement between the EU and Australia is expected to benefit dairy exports – not primarily through lower tariffs, but by removing technical trade barriers and easing requirements for product approval and registration.
According to the Danish agricultural media FødevareWatch, this is the message from Kenneth Lindharth Madsen, market director at Landbrug & Fødevarer, who points to the dairy sector as one of the areas with the most to gain from the agreement.
“We can expand our market shares in a number of significant areas,” he says to FødevareWatch, adding that easing technical trade barriers is where “we can hopefully make gains.”
Denmark’s total food cluster exported goods worth approximately DKK 3.3 billion to Australia in 2025. The European Commission expects the agreement to increase EU exports to Australia by up to 33 per cent over the next ten years, corresponding to an annual export value of up to EUR 17.7 billion.
Ratification still pending
The agreement is not yet fully in place. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen recently signed the deal, which has been eight years in the making, but it still needs to be ratified by EU member states and the European Parliament. France and Poland have previously expressed opposition, and in 2023 negotiations collapsed temporarily over disagreements about Australian beef and lamb on the European market.
Dairy exporters will therefore have to wait for the final green light – but the potential is there.
By Maja Løvstrup
Source: FødevareWatch
Photo: Colourbox
