The Prime Minister will need to explain to farmers why there were not more gains in meat and dairy in the trade agreement with the EU, the opposition says.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and President of the European Union Ursula von der Leyen unveiled the details of the new deal in Brussels overnight (NZ time), with negotiations continuing until just hours before the announcement.
The deal will immediately remove tarrifs for agricultural exports including kiwifruit, onions, apples, wine and mānuka honey, as well as manufactured goods, seafood and fish. Service providers - including in education - will also gain easier access to the EU.
However, the gains for major export sectors meat and dairy are more restricted.
Quotas for beef will increase to 10,000 tonnes and duty-free access for sheep meat to 38,000 tonnes a year, but the Meat Industry Association said for a market that consumed 6.5 million tonnes of beef annually it fell short of expectations.
National's Trade and Export Growth Spokesperson Todd McClay said he gave the trade agreement a six out of 10.
"There are some good gains in a number of areas, kiwifruit and the wine sector and seafood will be very happy but I can see why the dairy and meat sector in New Zealand is so disillusioned."
He said the deal was good for New Zealand and the gains were important, but he was not sure New Zealand would have an opportunity to revisit dairy and meat export access to the EU any time soon.
"The prime minister must have made the decision that actually the deal was good enough and she'll have to come back and explain to many of our farmers why she didn't get more," he said.
"There hasn't really been anything delivered from them and I think in that respect it's a missed opportunity.
"We have really good access in the FTA with the UK, we have tariff-free access for dairy into China and we have actually next to nothing of commercially meaningful value into the European Union."
He said the restrictions on geographical indicators - naming conventions specific to certain regions - were not as strong as was initially signalled, but it remained to be seen whether the government had agreed the EU could continue to add products to the list in future.
"I hope the government hasn't agreed to that because it would restrict us further. On the one hand [if] we're not able to sell them a lot of dairy products but we've been restricted on what we can do in other parts of the world, that would be unfair to our exporters."
Devil in the detail on climate - Greens
Green Party Spokesperson Golriz Ghahraman said the devil would be in the details when it came to climate commitments.
She said the party last week had issued a joint statement with EU Green Parliamentarians urging negotiators to include broad criteria including climate obligations.
"Without seeing the full text I probably can't celebrate this fully, but our main point of celebration will of course be that there's sanctionable commitments to meeting Paris agreement targets and obligations in this agreement and that is historic."
She said there were higher hopes, however, for each chapter in the agreement to have a climate lens and it was not yet clear if that was the case.
"It is often the case in these agreements that the chapters that don't directly refer to climate or environment are far more enforceable than the ones that do that are termed in much more aspirational language.
"That's what we will be looking for is that every chapter - in terms of every industry, every sanction - is compatible with our obligations to climate."
Ghahraman gave the deal a "tentative eight out of 10"
Deal secures 'minimal concessions' from Europe - ACT
The ACT Party Spokesperson Brooke van Velden said free trade was always good but "this deal appears to have as much regulation as trade".
She also criticised the climate obligations being celebrated by the Greens.
"There are minimal concessions and New Zealand has bought into sanctionable restrictions on the Paris agreement that sets a dangerous precedent restricting our ability to make our own policies."
"Ardern appears to have used the EU FTA to bind future governments to her own political agenda while forgetting to do the hard work getting access for staple New Zealand exports."
She said it would mean very little new trade, and while some aspects of the deal were good it set a bad precedent.
"The Prime Minister should have left Europe without a signed EU-trade deal and asked for further negotiation rounds considering the shoddy access for beef exporters."
Te Pāti Māori has not yet responded to requests for comment.
