Vangelis (Evangelos) Vitalis (born 1969) is a New Zealand diplomat and trade negotiator.
The following information has been provided, updated and maintained on behalf of the Greek-New Zealand Community and Hellenes Abroad.
Vitalis commenced his career working on the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI [1]) from 1993-5. His contribution was the preparation of two inter-linked analytical papers which provided the economic analysis in support of the elimination of investment incentives. This analysis, which largely pre-dated the conclusion of the GATT Uruguay Round, was highly critical of the TRIMs-related negotiations. Both papers were considered too ambitious, even for the OECD. Neither was taken forward as part of the wider negotiations.
Vitalis subsequently worked for three months in New York as a junior New Zealand Foreign Ministry delegate to the United Nations General Assembly - this was also during the time that New Zealand was a member of the UN Security Council. A posting to the New Zealand Embassy in Moscow as Second and then First Secretary followed (1997–1999), including a year's language training at the Moscow State Linguistic University (1996).
Vitalis then worked for a time at the Russian Ministry of Agriculture as part of a team developing a partial equilibrium model to assess the potential impact of Russia's accession to the World Trade Organization on its agricultural sector (1999–2000). Vitalis was an early advocate of the need to analyse Russia's agricultural policies at the federal and sub-federal level. He suggested that this was the only way to establish the full picture of Russian agricultural subsidisation a point reinforced in a paper he published on the subject [2]. He also worked briefly during this period in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan as an adviser to USAID and EUTACIS funded projects to these countries' Ministries of Finance on a range of diverse issues including currency reform and WTO accession.
From 2001 to 2011, Vitalis worked in various roles at the OECD. Between 2001 and 2004 he worked in Paris for the OECD Secretariat as a Chief Adviser. In particular, he headed a small unit of economists charged with providing the analytical papers to support the Ministerial-level OECD Round Table on Sustainable Development [3]. This influential body was chaired by the former New Zealand Minister for Environment and Associate Minister of Finance, Rt Hon Simon Upton. Ministers from a range of countries participated in Round Table meetings, including from France, the United Kingdom, the United States of America, Sweden, Canada, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Brazil and South Africa among others. The unique format of the Round Table also included leading NGOs, such as Greenpeace and WWF, alongside business organisations such as the World Business Council on Sustainable Development, Shell, BP and so on. The team led by Vitalis prepared a number of ground-breaking economic papers on a range of sustainability-related issues [4], including how to measure sustainable development [5], measuring embedded carbon flows (i.e. a consumption flow model) [6] and the potential synergies between investment flows and ODA [7]. Over this period Vitalis was also an Economic Adviser to the OECD's IUU Ministerial Task Force (2004-5)[8] and subsequently chaired the OECD Trade and Environment Committee (2008–12), including the OECD Global Forum on Trade and Climate Change (2009).
Vitalis rejoined the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade in 2004, though initially there was some concern within the Ministry that he was too over-specialised in trade and economic issues. In any case, Vitalis returned to Wellington and worked in the Economics Division of the Ministry as the Head of the Trade and Economic Analysis Unit. He initially worked on a set of papers on international economic issues relevant to New Zealand as a way of informing the development of the Government's Growth and Innovation Framework. It is during this time that Vitalis is believed to have first advocated the development of a customs union between Australia and New Zealand - he is known to have opposed a currency union. He also proposed the establishment of a "Minister for Australia" to take this idea forward as a way to 'refresh' the Closer Economic Relationship between Australia and New Zealand in time for the twenty-fifth anniversary (in 2008) of the launch of that agreement.
Vitalis also managed the (general equilibrium) modelling work for the Joint Study assessing the potential benefits of the China-New Zealand Free Trade Agreement (FTA)[9]. He then transferred to the Trade Negotiations Division and became the investment chapter lead for the China-New Zealand FTA and the lead New Zealand negotiator for the treaty-status trade & labour, and trade & environment agreements between China and New Zealand, which were negotiated alongside the China-New Zealand FTA (2004-8)[10]. New Zealand was the first OECD country to conclude an FTA with China.
It was during this period that Vitalis also contributed a chapter on the impact of OECD countries' trade policies on developing countries for a book edited by Robert Picciotto (former Director-General (Operations Evaluation) of the World Bank [11]. He also published articles in The Journal of Integrative Environmental Sciences, including on the linkage between economics, science and sustainability [12] and an assessment of the sustainable development effects of New Zealand's ground breaking agriculture reforms [13]. In 2005, Vitalis contributed a chapter on the intersection between agricultural, trade and environmental policies to a book edited by Thomas Lines of the International Institute for Sustainable Development [14].
Vitalis has been a senior New Zealand WTO negotiator including on trade and environment-related issues (2004-8). In particular, he appears to have played an influential role in the WTO negotiations on environmental goods, chairing the 'Friends of Environmental Goods' process which collectively identified and tabled at the WTO more than 150 specific products as environmental goods (2004-7). The 'Friends' grouping included primarily OECD countries. Vitalis is also believed to have proposed the innovative 'living list' concept also formally tabled at the WTO by New Zealand. Such a 'living' process would enable the regular updating of any list of products agreed at the WTO to ensure that the list keeps pace with the rapid evolution of environmental technologies [15]. At the same time, a series of papers tabled by New Zealand at the WTO and believed to be written by Vitalis proposed the establishment of a Voluntary Consultative Mechanism (later, a Voluntary Consultative Process) as a Pareto optimal way to address the intersection between trade measures contained in Multilateral Environmental Agreements and the WTO Agreements [16]. This innovative approach fell short of EU, Swiss and other expectations of the Doha-mandated 31 (i) negotiations, but was considered too ambitious by those WTO members that judged there was no confusion in the inter-relationship between these sets of agreements. It was during this time that Vitalis also produced his analysis of the relationship between trade, innovation and competition in the New Zealand context - a paper subsequently published by the OECD [17].
Vitalis was appointed New Zealand's Chief Negotiator for the ASEAN-Australia-New Zealand Free Trade Agreement (FTA) (AANZFTA; 2008–10) [18], and simultaneously for the Malaysia-New Zealand FTA (MNZFTA; 2009–10) negotiations which at that time had been stalled for over eighteen months. Vitalis successfully led the New Zealand team which concluded both the AANZFTA [19] and revived the moribund MNZFTA process such that less than six months later the MNZFTA was also concluded [20] and came into force on 1 August 2009 [21]. The signing of the agreement with Malaysia took place in Kuala Lumpur and was overseen by the Malaysian and New Zealand Prime Ministers and a sixty-member New Zealand business delegation [22].
At the time of the conclusion of the AANZFTA and MNZFTA, ASEAN was New Zealand's third most important trading partner after Australia and China and Malaysia was New Zealand's eighth most important trading partner. The ground-breaking AANZFTA was the first agreement negotiated jointly by Australia and New Zealand. It is characterised by a range of WTO-plus commitments made by ASEAN in areas as diverse as goods, services and intellectual poperty rights. The agreement is also characterised by the innovative use of an 'economic cooperation' chapter explicitly designed to help ASEAN members effectively implement the agreement. In particular, with its 'built-in' agenda, the AANZFTA is a 'living agreement' [23]. The deadline for the elimination of tariffs in the AANZFTA mirrors that of the China-New Zealand FTA, i.e. twelve years and is a significant improvement on the existing Thailand-New Zealand Closer Economic Partnership which eliminated tariffs on New Zealand products within twenty years. The Malaysia-New Zealand FTA contains a number of significantly AANZFTA-Plus provisions, not least the elimination of a 15% tariff on kiwifruit and a range of new services commitments ensuring that New Zealand education, engineering and environmental service providers have a 'first mover' advantage over their competitors ([24] and [25]). Vitalis' leadership in successfully concluding the AANZFTA was specifically acknowledged by the then New Zealand Minister of Trade, Hon Tim Groser [26] and during the New Zealand parliamentary debate on the ratification of the agreement itself [27]. Vitalis also led the New Zealand AANZFTA 'roadshow' which promoted the opportunities presented by this plurilateral agreement to New Zealand stakeholders in all of the main centres of New Zealand [28].
Following the successful conclusion of AANZFTA, Vitalis was appointed the New Zealand Deputy High Commissioner in Canberra from 2009 to 2011, during which time he also completed the Malaysia-New Zealand FTA. The relationship with Australia is New Zealand's most significant and the High Commission is New Zealand's largest globally. Following the retirement of the High Commissioner, Dr John Larkindale, Vitalis was Acting High Commissioner from November 2010 to May 2011.[1] His period as Acting High Commissioner coincided with Australian Prime Minister Gillard's historic address to the New Zealand Parliament and the Christchurch Earthquake.
In 2009-10, Vitalis was instrumental in the establishment by New Zealand of the Friends of Fossil Fuel Subsidy Reform (FFFSR) grouping. This non-G20 group of countries has two inter-related objectives: to support the G20's ambitions for reform and elimination of fossil fuel subsidies; and to support the need for greater transparency around the data for such subsidies. Vitalis spoke at the launch of the initiative in June 2010 and also at a GSI-UNEP-WTO Conference [29] on the subject later that year. The FFFSR currently comprises Costa Rica, Denmark, Ethiopia, New Zealand, Norway, Switzerland and Sweden. The grouping has been active at APEC and the UNFCCC to advance its case that reform of fossil fuel subsidies can make a meaningful difference to both economic and environmental outcomes. In this regard, the FFFSR works closely with a leading NGO, the Global Subsidies Initiative based in Geneva [30]. The initial meetings of the FFFSR were held in Paris to conicide with Vitalis' travel to Paris to chair the OECD Committee on Trade and Environment.
In 2010, Vitalis was invited to Manila by the Asian Development Bank to present a paper as part of its regional economic integration seminar series. The paper essentially argues that preferential trade agreements could in fact be drivers of meaningful liberalisation and thus integration and thus presents an intriguing reference point to the 'stumbling blocks' thesis posited by Bhagwati and others [31]. He reprised a more elaborate version of this paper at a Boao Forum event in Beijing in December that year [32]. There were strong rumours in mid to late 2010 that Vitalis had resigned from the New Zealand Foreign Ministry and had secured a senior role at the Asian Development Bank to help its work on regional economic integration.
In early 2011, however, Vitalis was appointed New Zealand Ambassador to the European Commission in Brussels,[2] with cross-accreditations as New Zealand Ambassador to NATO, Belgium, Bulgaria, Romania and Luxembourg.[3]
Vitalis is believed to have attended schools in Greece, Germany (Andreanum, Hannover), Fiji (Veiuto Primary School, Lautoka) and in New Zealand. He studied at Auckland University[4] and Harvard. In 1993 he was co-editor of Craccum, the weekly magazine produced by the Auckland University Students' Association of the University of Auckland.
A Greek-New Zealander, Vitalis' parents, Antonios and Regina Vitalis, emigrated to New Zealand in 1980. Vitalis is married to Tanya Jurado (a Colombian-New Zealander), a widely-published expert on SME policy development [33]. They have three children. Vitalis speaks Greek, German, and Russian and is a fanatical supporter of the Wellington Phoenix football club, the All Whites, the New Zealand national football team, and Olympiakos Piraeus, the Greek association football club.