New Zealand and the European Union – Edited by Matthew Gibbons

Abstract

Matthew Gibbons ( ed. ), New Zealand and the European Union . Rosedale, North Shore : Pearson , 2008 . vii + 163 pp., tables & graphs. ISBN : 978 0 7339 9383 1 . Paperback NZ$50.00 . It seems a long time since we were preoccupied with markets for meat and dairy produce in the UK as it approached membership of the European Economic Community (EEC). Matthew Gibbons and his collaborators at the National Centre for Research on Europe at the University of Canterbury have provided a useful review of how the relationship between New Zealand and the European Union (EU) has developed since 1973. It is enhanced by a thoughtful foreword in which Frank Holmes looks back on the issues involved and on his involvement in them since 1957. This is especially appropriate as Gibbons revisits the assessment made in a report written for the Institute of Policy Studies in 1991, Frank Holmes and Clive Pearson's Meeting the European Challenge. (They are given a pass with credit.) Gibbons et al. assemble some useful statistics, mostly compiled within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade and relating to bilateral trade with European economies. It also draws on some interviews with trade diplomats and New Zealand Trade and Enterprise officials recently based in Europe. Otherwise it relies on secondary literature, providing a sound review but little that is novel. The statistical material is presented in constant-price series, which has some obvious advantages but which obscures the impact of relative prices. The value of preferential access to specific EU markets obviously depends on relative prices for different commodities and in different markets. All those hours of wrangling about quotas have left deep memories among New Zealand trade diplomats. Perhaps Gibbons et al. could have taken a somewhat more distant perspective and reflected on the essential futility of the exercise for anything but a transitional period. We might be impressed by the argument that there were few other international markets for dairy produce – although it seems a bit thin when we look at international dairy trade now – but why should we think Europeans would care? They did not owe New Zealand a living; their concern was to negotiate a basis for UK participation in their regional arrangement. There is only a brief reference to UK officials using the Australia New Zealand United States Treaty dispute to announce that the transition was over for them and no discussion of the fortuitous nature of the outcome of the Uruguay Round whereby preferential quotas became permanent. The basic approach of Gibbons et al. is that trade with Europe is inherently desirable. It lacks economic instinct. It enquires whether the course of New Zealand trade with Europe depended on entry by the UK to the EEC or whether it faced ‘inevitable decline’ in any case. An economic conception would investigate the impact of the UK's relatively slow economic growth as a constraint on New Zealand. That was the underlying motivation of ‘diversification’ from the 1960s onwards. Europe was just one part of an increasingly interdependent world, and the significance of European markets always depended on what was happening elsewhere. Furthermore, Gibbons et al. focus inexorably on bilateral relationships, which is odd given that the motivation for Meeting the European Challenge was the ‘Single European Market’. The marketing interviews provide material about national markets; does this indicate misguided analysis or has the single market had so little impact? In addition, for some time the EU has probably been most important to New Zealand as an important element in plurilateral and multilateral settings (for disarmament and human rights as much as trade). Gibbons et al. provide some material on tourism and personal contacts that could well have been expanded at the expense of the somewhat forlorn effort to convince us that Europe provides new opportunities for traditional bilateral trade. The really interesting question about New Zealand's relationship with the EU is whether historical cultural links have any value as both economies participate in multilateral economic integration.