London: European officials will land in Australia next month to begin negotiations on a free trade deal, after the EU’s governing council gave its long-awaited official authorisation on Tuesday.

The council also approved negotiation of a similar deal with New Zealand. They expect the agreement to increase EU exports to New Zealand and Australia by about a third in the long term, through removing customs duties and other barriers.

But the council has added a warning that it wants to make sure the deal doesn’t compromise its high standards of social and environmental protection, or hurt small and medium sized business.

Europe has already signalled that it will want to include protection for its agricultural producers in the deal, particularly by ensuring that the names of traditional European food and drink products (such as wine and cheese) are not used by Australian producers selling into Europe.