- 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
12-Dec-2011
Ecofair Trade Dialogue
MISEREOR, the Heinrich Böll Foundation, the Third World Network, Anthra and Glopolis decided to conduct their own civil society impact assessment of the proposed EU-India FTA with a focus on the right to food.
12-Dec-2011
Greens/EFA
VIdeo of a conference organised by the Greens / European Free Alliance in the European Parliament on 8 December 2011
9-Dec-2011
DNP+ believes that IP should be completely be removed from the trade
negotiations.
8-Dec-2011
Just on the day when the government suspended its decision on FDI in the retail sector, a report by United Nations’ Working Group on Human Rights in India pointed that the country’s free trade agreements (FTA) threaten the rights to food, health, work and development, especially of vulnerable groups.
22-Nov-2011
Business Standard
Negotiations for the ambitious India-EU free trade agreement (FTA) is on in “full steam” and in the final stages of “give-and-take”, even as the euro zone crisis has gripped all its 27 member-countries.
19-Nov-2011
There is little chance that the proposed free trade agreement (FTA) between India and the European Union (EU) would be signed before or at the India-EU summit to be held in New Delhi in February next year, a top German official said.
14-Nov-2011
First Post
Admitting that some issues are blocking the finalisation of the Free Trade Agreement with India, the European Union on Monday voiced hope that negotiations would be completed by the next India-EU Summit scheduled to be held in February.
28-Sep-2011
Indian Wine Academy
The target date for reaching a deal is now February 2012
12-Sep-2011
India and the European Union (EU) are resuming talks on a free trade agreement (FTA) from tomorrow.
4-Sep-2011
Heavy Industry Minister Praful Patel has said the Commerce Ministry is "broadly supportive" of the view that the domestic automobile industry should be protected when India signs a free trade agreement with the European Union.
