Political correspondent
May 18, 2025 – 9.33am
Rome | Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says Prosecco and Feta made in Australia are the real deal and Europe should be proud of migrants making products based on their heritage, not trying to brand them something else.
Albanese said he would renew leader-level discussions for an Australia-European free trade deal when he meets European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on the sidelines of Pope Leo XIV’s Inauguration Mass in Rome.
But echoing Trade Minister Don Farrell, he said Australia would not strike a deal with the EU “at any price”, indicating he was prepared to walk away for a second time after negotiations fell apart in 2023.
“We’re up for a deal that’s in Australia’s national interest,” he said in response to questions The Australian Financial Review on Saturday.
The meeting with von der Leyen will be Albanese’s sixth since being elected in May 2022. He is also scheduled to meet recently elected Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, and is scheduled to have a discussion with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
He may also meet with United States Vice president J.D. Vance, though no meeting has been sought by Australian officials, underlining the shifting importance of partners beyond the US.
Striking an FTA with Europe gained new impetus in the fallout of Trump’s savage global trade war, as countries scramble to diversify markets and salvage what they can of the global trading system.
As a bloc, the EU was Australia’s third-largest trading partner in 2023, with two-way trade valued at $106.2 billion. Australian exports to the EU totalled $25.5 billion and imports from the EU totalled $80.7 billion.
Negotiations for a free trade pact with Europe ceased in 2023 after the two sides were unable to move through an impasse over Australian agricultural exports such as beef. Albanese said this would be “one of things we assess” in coming back to the negotiating table.
“These things are always trade-offs,” he said.
Fight for Prosecco and Feta
Another sticking point was Europe’s commitment to so-called geographical indicators (GI), which prohibit the use of certain product names when they are not from a particular region.
The most high-profile GI is Champagne. Only sparkling wine from the Champagne region of France is allowed to be marketed as such. Italy wants similar restrictions on the use of Prosecco and Feta, and there are more than 1000 other GIs that Europe wants adopted in its free trade deals.
Ahead of the meeting in Rome, EU ambassador to Australia Gabriele Visentin signalled Europe was open to compromise on the use of names such as prosecco and feta by Australian producers.
“There is a history of possible compromises which were acceptable to our partners as well,” he told The Sydney Morning Herald.
Albanese on Saturday indicated Australia was not for turning on the issue.
“The Europeans will put forward what they think is in their interest, we will put forward what we believe is in Australia’s interest,” he said.
“One of the things about naming is that for a range of the products such as Prosecco, to give just one, that are produced in Australia, the naming rights of those products are related to migrants from Europe who have come to Australia and produced products that they continue to call Feta or Prosecco because they’re based upon the heritage.
“That’s something that the Europeans should be proud of in my view. We are very proud … we’re a multicultural nation, and we will put forward sensible propositions on that.
“As I have pointed out now publicly what I said previously to Ursula von der Leyen and other European representatives, that is something that should be a source of pride. The idea you still produce Feta, but you call it something else, doesn’t change what it is [and], in my view, [is] not appropriate.”
Seeking a win-win outcome
When asked what a successful deal with Europe would look like, Albanese pointed to the Australia-UK free trade deal a template for a good deal.
“That has resulted in wins for both nations, particular wins for us in terms of sheep meat, lamb and beef wine. There’s been a range of real increases in exports to the United Kingdom as a result of that agreement,” he said.
“We’d be looking for similarly wins for both Australia and Europe.”
Trade has dominated the prime ministers trip overseas, which began in Jakarta for his first annual leaders’ meeting with Indonesian president Prabowo Subianto.
On that visit, his first since being re-elected on May 3, Albanese announced Australia would back Indonesia’s bid to join the trans-Pacific free trade pact to help counter the global chaos created by US President Donald Trump’s trade war.
“This was part of the theme that I discussed with the Indonesian president in Jakarta. It’s something that is of concern right around the world because the United States has the world’s largest economy, [and] has an impact when it engages in the positions it has put forward,” he said on Saturday.
Posted by RTSBasebuilder
2 Comments
We should be demanding a GI on Ugg boots, only those that are made in Australia with Australian wool should be eligible to carry the ugg name.
Based.
The Italians officially renamed the Prosecco grape variety to Glera so that they could pretend the sparkling wine was named after a village also called Prosecco which had no history making sparkling wine and was infact 150 kilometres from the regions that did make sparkling wine from the Prosecco grape. EU geographic protections are blatant protectionism, and there is a degree of mercantilism and imperialism in the EU demanding third party markets abide by them as an inherent condition in any bilateral trade agreement.
There is a degree of arrogance and unearned snobbery among Europeans who defend this farce. It’s always built on an assumption that European products are just inherently better and these sneaky foreigners are trying to trick consumers into buying inferior non-European products, even when those non-European products are completely upfront about their terroir.