External affairs minister S Jaishankar expressed optimism on the proposed free trade agreement with the European Union and hoped that it would conclude soon. Describing the agreement as a potential “game changer” for the India-EU relationship, he hoped for a mutually beneficial conclusion to negotiations within a “short planned timeline”.
Underlining the areas of cooperation such as clean energy, technology transfer, digital transformation, and emerging technologies such as additive manufacturing and AI, the minister said that the India-EU FTA is “a very important goal”.
India and the EU launched negotiations for the free trade agreement in June 2022 after a lull of almost 10 years when the talks were called off in 2013. Now, both sides are hopeful of concluding the negotiations this year alone. Only last week, visiting German chancellor Olaf Scholz also expressed his keenness on an early conclusion of the deal and said he and Prime Minister Narendra Modi were committed to finalising the deal. “We want to further deepen trade ties between the European Union and India and this is why we speak strongly for the FTA. It is an important topic and I will get personally involved to ensure that this does not drag on,” the German chancellor had said.
“India’s economic comeback credentials are matched by our geopolitical weight in arriving from a strategic location in the Indo-Pacific region and an increasing defence and first responder capability,” said Jaishankar while addressing the India Europe Business & Sustainability Conclave in Delhi.
Jaishankar highlighted the big-ticket reforms brought in by about nine years of the BJP government at the Centre, despite some of them being “politically counterintuitive”. He said, “Prime Minister Modi has undertaken several structural economic reforms, some of which were clearly politically counterintuitive, nudging the informal economy to the organised sector, cleansing the financial system, rationalising taxation, incentivising production, doubling down on infrastructure and logistics, digitising the government’s interface with its citizens and ushering in an ambitious energy transition. Each one of these was part of a policy mix, which is today paying off, and that in my view is still just the beginning.”
Jaishankar also underscored the growing discourse of a sustainable global supply chain. “Europe and India can strengthen each other’s strategic autonomy by reducing dependencies, cooperating on critical technologies, and reassuring supply-side restructuring,” said Jaishankar
China, which has long been the manufacturing hub for countries around the globe including Europe and USA, has given worries in recent times. As the world was reeling under the Covid pandemic a strict, zero-Covid policy in China resulted in lockdowns of cities for months, affecting factory output and throwing the global supply of goods off track. Also, the economic heft of China has started increasingly aligning with its geopolitical negotiations as a bargaining chip. In recent times, the USA, Japan, and several European countries have started hunting for alternative manufacturing destinations in Asia, aiming to diversify manufacturing points and reduce dependency on one country. India is also eyeing a lion’s share in grabbing investment and manufacturing opportunities flying out from China.
Czech minister of foreign affairs Jan Lipavský highlighted the areas of cooperation between India and the Czech Republic in post-pandemic recovery, healthcare services, pharmaceuticals, telemedicine, biomedicine, and biotechnology. Danish foreign minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen stressed on the Green Strategic Partnership between India and Europe and emphasised the importance of private sector involvement in creating a green sustainable future.
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