This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

Australia will begin negotiations on a free trade agreement with the European Union in 2017 after the conclusion of talks on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Turkey.

Malcolm Turnbull met the EU leadership on Sunday morning in order to secure a timeline for the negotiation of the proposed FTA with Europe, and was told it would take time to do the requisite groundwork with EU member states.

The Australian prime minister secured the backing of the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, for Australia to negotiate a free trade agreement with Europe during his one-day visit to the chancellery in Berlin last Friday.

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“It is a very important step for us to have an FTA with Europe,” Turnbull told the European council president, Donald Tusk, and the European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, during opening remarks on Sunday morning. “This is the first substantive step and it is very important,” he said.

At the opening of Turnbull’s bilateral meeting with the EU leadership, Juncker also took the opportunity to praise Australia’s leadership in taking 12,000 refugees from Syria.

With the refugee crisis a major issue at the G20, Juncker later used a press conference to deliver a rebuke to nationalist governments in Europe, telling reporters at the G20: “We should not mix the categories of people coming to Europe.”

The formalities of the G20 will get under way in Antalya shortly.

Given the recent events in Paris, this year’s summit will have a strong focus on terrorism and security. It will consider options for a political solution to the Syrian crisis, as well as strategies to deal with the large quantity of refugees displaced by the conflagration.

Turnbull will also undertake meetings on the sidelines on Sunday with the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, and the French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, before going to the summit’s working dinner on countering violent extremism.

Fabius is attending the G20 in lieu of the French president, François Hollande, who remained in Paris to deal with the terror crisis.