EU–Australia relations: a strategic partnership in all but name?

Abstract

Any consideration of classifying the relationship between the European Union (EU) and Australia as a strategic partnership would not have entered the lexicon of either partner in past decades. This article traces the development and maturing of this relationship from decades of tension and recrimination to mutual understanding and engagement on issues of common interest. It illustrates that although the relationship cannot be regarded as a strategic partnership, there is evidence of increasing common ground as the two interlocutors are no longer worlds apart. There is less perception of the tyranny of distance and the burden of memory. The relationship may not be a strategic partnership, but it is a partnership that has elements that are comprehensive, reciprocal, empathetic, long-term oriented, regional and global.

Notes

¹ Hansard, 14 May 2002, 2015, House of Representatives Questions Without Notice Rural and Regional Australia, Economy Question. Question by Antony Windsor, 2013–2015.

² The comment was made to the author by an EU official during a meeting in the European Commission in Brussels.

³ The author provided training courses for the Australian government in Canberra from 2006 to 2011.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Philomena Murray

Philomena Murray is Professor and Jean Monnet Chair ad personam in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne, where she is also the Director of the Research Unit on Regional Governance in the EU Centre on Shared Complex Challenges. She holds honorary positions at the Institute for International Integration Studies at Trinity College Dublin; the United Nations University – Comparative Regional Integration Studies, Bruges, and the National Centre for Research on Europe at the University of Canterbury. She is a Visiting Professor at the College of Europe, Bruges. Publications include Australia and the European Superpower, Melbourne University Press, 2005; Murray P ed. Europe and Asia: Regions in Flux, Palgrave, 2008, and Christiansen T, Kirchner E, Murray P eds., The Palgrave Handbook of EU-Asia Relations (Palgrave, 2013 hardback, 2015 paperback). Two books will be published in 2015: Michael Longo and Philomena Murray, Europe's Legitimacy Crisis: From Causes to Solutions (Palgrave) and Louis Brennan and Philomena Murray, eds. Drivers of Regionalism and Integration in Europe and Asia (Routledge). Email: [email protected].