After attending meetings with other Commonwealth Foreign Ministers in Trinidad Murray McCully, has scheduled an extensive tour of European capitals in an effort to breath fresh life into the effort to reach a comprehensive partnership arrangement with the EU. The partnership concept has been on the table for some time, but had been left in abeyance until after all the EU members signed up to the Lisbon treaty, and appointed a new president and foreign affairs supremo, at the head of a new pan-European foreign service. ECP president Jose Barroso told John Key earlier this year he saw good potential for greater co-operation across a range of global and regional areas. But more recently, alarm bells were ringing in some EU circles, as NZ re-focussed its diplomacy towards Asia, concentrating on bringing to a conclusion free trade agreements with Malaysia, Hong Kong, ASEAN, the Gulf states, and negotiating others with India and South Korea.

Comments by Key in Japan on Asia’s significance for global growth were seen in some European capitals as NZ downgrading its European links. But McCully insists the Govt regards its links with the EU as “fundamentally important.” The EU remains NZ’s second biggest market, and NZ still looks to Europe for its culture and values. McCully’s swing around Europe will take him to Brussels, Vienna, Berlin, Paris, and London, and later to Scandinavia to build support for the comprehensive arrangement. For more than 30 years NZ has had to fight to retain its European markets. Protectionist forces remain active (although the EU dropped its emergency dairy subsidies this week). Climate change and carbon miles are the latest weapon to attack NZ exports.

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