{"id":31475,"date":"2026-03-24T18:58:29","date_gmt":"2026-03-24T18:58:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vtmarketsglobal.com\/en\/uncategorized\/31475\/"},"modified":"2026-03-24T18:58:29","modified_gmt":"2026-03-24T18:58:29","slug":"rabobanks-bas-van-geffen-says-the-eu-is-diversifying-alliances-sealing-a-free-trade-pact-with-australia-alongside-mercosur-india-and-indonesia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vtmarketsglobal.com\/en\/live-updates\/31475\/","title":{"rendered":"Rabobank\u2019s Bas van Geffen says the EU is diversifying alliances, sealing a free-trade pact with Australia, alongside Mercosur, India and Indonesia"},"content":{"rendered":"The EU has signed a free trade agreement with Australia as it seeks to broaden its economic links amid geopolitical risk. The deal follows agreements with Mercosur, India and Indonesia, and still needs approval from the European Parliament.\n\nThe agreement includes tariff cuts and higher quotas for some dairy products, plus beef and sheep meat. It also protects geographical product names, affecting how certain foods can be marketed.\n\n

Trade And Security Implications<\/h3>\nThe European Commission estimates the deal could raise annual bilateral trade by about \u20ac20 billion over the next decade. The deal also includes a security and defence partnership and provisions linked to access to Australia\u2019s critical raw materials.\n\nThe article was produced using an Artificial Intelligence tool and reviewed by an editor.\n\nThe EU is clearly trying to secure its supply chains, and this new Australian trade agreement is a major part of that strategy. While the deal mentions agriculture, its real focus is geopolitical security and critical raw materials. For us, this creates clear opportunities in specific commodity and equity derivatives over the next few weeks as the market digests the details.\n\nWe expect downward pressure on European agricultural producers, particularly in the beef and dairy sectors, due to increased Australian quotas. We saw what happened with beef futures back in 2025 when the Mercosur deal was finally ratified, causing a temporary dip in European producer stocks. Consequently, buying put options on select European food producers could be a prudent short-term move to hedge against this incoming competition.\n\n

Critical Raw Materials And Market Positioning<\/h3>\nThe most significant angle is the improved access to Australia’s critical raw materials, like lithium and rare earths. Australia remains the world\u2019s top lithium producer, with government figures from the 2024-2025 fiscal year showing exports of the material grew by over 30%. Securing this supply is a huge strategic win for EU industry and de-risks a major bottleneck.\n\nWe should be looking at call options on major Australian resource companies, as their long-term access to the vast EU market is now more secure. This also helps European EV and battery manufacturers, who have been struggling with volatile input costs. Considering the long-term nature of this supply security, longer-dated call options on these EU industrial names might also be attractive.\n\nThis agreement is also likely to affect the EUR\/AUD currency pair, as increased and more secure trade should favour the Australian economy. The Australian dollar has already seen a slight firming to 1.64 against the Euro this past month on preliminary trade whispers. We could see the Aussie dollar strengthen further, making options that bet on this trend worth considering.\n\nCreate your live VT Markets account<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0start trading<\/a>\u00a0now. <\/b>\n

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Start trading now – Click here<\/a> to create your real VT Markets account <\/strong> <\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

EU signs Australia free-trade deal, cutting tariffs, boosting quotas, protecting product names, pending European Parliament approval.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-updates"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"josephine","author_link":"https:\/\/www.vtmarketsglobal.com\/en\/author\/josephine\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarketsglobal.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarketsglobal.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarketsglobal.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarketsglobal.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarketsglobal.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31475"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarketsglobal.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31475\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarketsglobal.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarketsglobal.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarketsglobal.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}