- Negotiations
The European Union and India launched negotiations on a bilateral free trade and investment agreement in June 2007. However, between the governments, a number of controversies have been plaguing the talks. Delhi wants Brussels to relax its stringent food safety criteria which penalise Indian farm and fishery exports and to make it easier for Indian professionals to work in the EU. Europe is primarily out to win major openings of India’s services sector and broad liberalisation of foreign investment, while India does not want to discuss allowing European firms to compete in India’s government procurement market.
Indian social movements, including fisherfolk and labour unions, people living with HIV/AIDS and other health activists have been mobilizing against the FTA. International actions and campaigns have particularly targeted the proposed intellectual property provisions of the agreement, and the impact of the FTA on access to medicines.
last update: May 2012
Photo: MSF
20-Feb-2012
First Post
An analysis of the FTA, the circumstances, additional documents and the entire process smack of an agreement that is terribly not in favour of India, writes KM Gopakumar
17-Feb-2012
To provide a level-playing field to the domestic industry, trade body Assocham today urged the government to keep paper and its products in the negative list while signing bi-lateral and multi-lateral trade treaties.
17-Feb-2012
Last week, the 12th India-EU Summit was held amid growing expectations that the two partners would announce the date for the conclusion of the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) that is being negotiated since 2007. This agreement was projected as “one of the new generation of EU FTAs launched as part of the Global Europe strategy”, the focus of which was market opening and stronger rules in new trade areas of economic importance to the EU, including intellectual property rights (IPR), services, investment, public procurement and competition.
17-Feb-2012
La Via Campesina
Indian farmers joined people with HIV and small traders to protest against the EU-India Free Trade agreement, which will impact all three sectors by ending livelihoods and cutting access to cheap medicines.
17-Feb-2012
FTA Malaysia
Civil society groups around the world have upped the ante in the global struggle to protect and promote access to medicine and focused their attention on the European Union-India free trade agreement (FTA) currently being negotiated between the two governments.
10-Feb-2012
The Hindu
“Whether we get to live or die should not be up to trade negotiators. We’re all here today with one clear message to India and the EU: ‘Don’t trade away our lives’,” said Mundrika Gahlot of the Delhi Network of Positive People.
10-Feb-2012
IANS
India and the 27-nation European Union Friday signed two key pacts, including a joint declaration on research and innovation, and agreed to step up negotiations for a broad-based trade and investment pact which continues to be mired in "complex issues."
10-Feb-2012
Hindu Businessline
As India and the European Union met for a summit in New Delhi on Friday, thousands of food, retail, and health activists took to the streets in the Capital to protest against the proposed Free Trade Agreement (FTA).
10-Feb-2012
Sale of products that compete with EU’s GI-protected ones will be affected. Indian dairy sector has reasons to worry.
9-Feb-2012
Business Standard
Amul, India’s best-known milk products maker, may have to soon erase words such as Gouda and Emmental from its cheese labels
