The European Union’s ambassador says the EU is unlikely to match New Zealand’s recent zero-tariff trade deal with the United Kingdom, and has played down concerns that France wants to delay NZ-EU free trade negotiations.
Chief negotiators will next week “take stock” of the prospective NZ-EU free trade deal, after four weeks of negotiations that EU Ambassador to New Zealand Nina Obermaier said on Friday amounted to “significant progress”.
But hopes that a deal may be reaching completion appear to have diminished. Obermaier said there remained some “outstanding issues which … leads us to believe we’re not quite in the very final stages of this negotiation”.
The EU’s market access offer – the level of tariffs and quotas that would be applied to New Zealand’s goods at the European border – remained a sticking point.
