From the Publisher

Europe Business Review, Oct-Dec, 1999

The subject of our cover story - the Sydney Olympics - will draw more European attention to Australia than any previous event.

Already, European companies have won large contracts to supply equipment and services to the 2000 Games and European athletes are already training and testing in Australia.

European tourists and business people will also be in Australia in record numbers next year for what will be, by all measurements, the largest sports event in world history.

There will be profits and pleasures for all here in Olympics year and all interested in the growing Australia-Europe connection will want to ensure that the surge of travel and transactions is not a one-off episode.

Of course, Europe has much more on its mind than Australia - and vice-versa. But the economic relationship is substantial by any standards.

The latest Australian and EU statistics on the partnership which we publish in this issue confirm the two-way growth in trade and investment.

Next month one of the key issues in the relationship - indeed, the most difficult one - will be addressed again.

The World Trade Organisation summit in Seattle will be dominated by the advocacy of the Cairns Group, led by Australia, for freer trade in farm products.

The free-trade farmers want the next big series of WTO policy talks - the Millennium Round - to cut agricultural subsidies in all or many of their diverse forms.

The Europeans, and the Japanese and the Americans, all fertilise their farms with public money to some extent - and sometimes claim that Australia, and other agricultural exporters - have systems of rural subsidy.

Europe's Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) is under review and reform - and arguments about it will doubtless stretch well into the next century, providing work for another generation of bureaucrats and trade diplomats.

This year, Europe Business Review, in its fourth year of publication, has again covered the politics, economies, business and finance of the EU's 15 member nations and the impacts on Australia.

We look forward to continuing to do so in the new century about to begin.

Peter Charlton