India, EU to discuss FTA on April 13 in Hannover
Business Standard | April 10, 2015
India, EU to discuss FTA on April 13 in Hannover
EU to push for higher car emission standards
Nayanima Basu | New Delhi
After a long hiatus of over two years, India and the European Union (EU) will be discussing the proposed Broad-Based Trade and Investment Agreement (BTIA) on April 13. This will be the first meeting between both the new leadership in India as well as in the EU.
This will happen during a meeting between minister of state for commerce and industry (independent charge) Nirmala Sitharaman and EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström on the sidelines of the Hannover Messe, world’s largest industrial fair where India is the partner country for the first time ever.
The European Union (EU) has insisted on higher level of environmental standards under the BTIA or Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with India. EU has said while talks on slashing of tariffs across agriculture and industrial goods can continue, it is of vital importance for the EU to adhere to global standards.
According to commerce department officials, the matter is expected to come up significantly when both ministers meet next week. Sitharaman is accompanying Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the fair taking place in Germany.
“Standards are something that will make a lot of sense. You can call it something else, change the names, if you want. That’s fine. It doesn’t have to be called Euro IV or Euro V for car emissions. You can call it Bharat IV Bharat V, no issues. The important point is that there should be convergence on standards and we are willing to engage with the bureau of standards that we have been doing but we want to do more,” EU ambassador to India João Cravinho told Business Standard in an interview.
This is because, the ambassador believes, will make India more compatible in terms of accessing mega markets. The EU is presently negotiating a high-end trade pact with the US – Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) – with a special focus on standards.
On the issue of intellectual property rights (IPR), Cravinho said it wants India to only adhere to global trading norms under the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS).
“The point about IPR is not that we are asking India to adhere to TRIPS, which is fine, we are not asking for TRIPS plus (provisions) but it is important that it should not be TRIPS minus. So that’s an issue we have with IPR and that’s what the Indian government accepts … We can haggle about tariffs, this is part of the process. But what should not be lost from sight is that due economic logic of developing agreements in rapidly changing globalised world,” the ambassador added.
The meeting between both ministers, which is being touted as the first attempt to break the ice, is taking place in the wake of a letter written by Malmström to Sitharaman last month urging her to restart and expedite the negotiations. This was the first official communication from Brussels to New Delhi on the pending FTA.
"Commissioner Malmström wrote to minister Sithraman three weeks ago and said that it would be great if we can meet, sit down, talk and move things forward,” Cravinho added.
Talks for having the FTA or Broadbased Trade and Investment Agreement (BTIA) started in 2007. So far there had been 15 rounds of talks. However, talks got stalled for over two years now with change of guards taking place in both India as well as the European Commission.
Over these years the talks also got mired into controversy and the FTA came under scathing attack from various civil society groups, NGOs and activists mainly on the issue of access to affordable healthcare and medicines.
The FTA seeks to slash tariffs by over 90 per cent over a span of 10 years from the the day of implementation of the pact.
According to a study done by the Delhi’s policy group study recently, the stakes are high if India does not consider signing the FTA with its largest trading partner. The negotiations need to be injected with a high-level political will in order to proceed and finalized the talks.
The EU accounts for almost 17 per cent of the country’s total exports. The region is presently India’s largest trading partner with bilateral trade worth $130 billion in 2013-2014.
