MCF Seminar: Environmental Issues in the Future EU-Australia Free Trade Agreement

For two decades now, the European Union has integrated environmental matters into its free trade agreements. This integration is evolving, with international trade law increasingly being seen as a powerful apparatus for protecting the planet. However, the links between the environment and trade are ambivalent. On the one hand, the strength of international trade law could be borrowed for environmental protection; on the other, an increase in international trade comes together with an increase in environmental impacts.

As the European Union and Australia are currently negotiating a free trade agreement, this MCF seminar proposes an overview of what to expect from the climate and biodiversity provisions of the future deal.  

About the speaker:

Dr Justine Muller is a Post-doctoral Fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Asia-Pacific Centre for Environmental Law (APCEL) with expertise in the nexus between trade and the environment. She has a PhD (2024) from the European University Institute, Florence, Italy, where she wrote her thesis on the integration of biodiversity in the European Union’s trade agreements. Justine also has experience in international negotiations, serving as an assistant to the European Union’s delegation to the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).