- 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
15-Feb-2011
Reuters
Transparency campaigners have hauled the European Union’s executive to court for withholding documents about free trade talks with India, intensifying pressure on the bloc to make its policy-making less secretive.
8-Feb-2011
The Standard
Kenyan activists have written to the European Union and the Kenya Government, protesting what they term damaging trade agreements such as the European Union-India Free Trade Agreement and the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. They say the pacts would damage the fight against Aids.
1-Feb-2011
Madhyam
The EC recommendations contain several alarming policy provisions and therefore should receive public attention both in Europe and India. If implemented, these provisions would seriously undermine development priorities and restrict policy space to regulate investments in the public interest.
1-Feb-2011
Indian Express
Troubling news reports indicate that a newly-minted Free Trade Agreement
between the European Union and India would permit companies to circumvent
visionary safeguards built into India’s 2005 Patents Act, widely seen as one
of the most progressive patent laws in the world.
27-Jan-2011
PharmaBiz
The Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance, an association of leading Indian pharma companies, has raised alarm over the recent media reports that efforts are going on in the Prime Ministers Office to destabilize India’s IPR regime at the behest of European Union which, the IPA cautioned the government, will have serious implications on the public health, access to medicines and the domestic generic industry.
27-Jan-2011
Business Standard
Despite all official assurances, the path towards a free trade agreement between India and the European Union this year remains ambiguous, as both sides are unwilling to relax their stand on the biggest stumbling block — the issue of “data exclusivity”.
22-Jan-2011
Livemint
European Union ambassador to India Daniele Smadja on Friday said ongoing negotiations for the India-EU broad-based trade and investment agreement may not be concluded by April.
13-Jan-2011
Financial Express
Hard lobbying by the European Union, home to many of the world’s largest pharmaceutical firms like Novartis, Sanofi-Aventis and Roche, has struck a chord with India’s Prime Minister’s Office, which is now ’putting pressure’ on a reluctant commerce and industry ministry to include a
contentious IPR chapter in the proposed India-EU trade and investment pact.
12-Jan-2011
CIS
A draft of the IPR chapter of the EU-India FTA, made publicly available for
the first time, provides insight into
India’s response in July 2010 to several EU proposals on intellectual
property protection and enforcement.
8-Jan-2011
Presented to the EU-India Summit on 10 December 2010
