India to EU: be more flexible in free trade talks

Brussels, Dec 12 - The fourth round of India-Europe talks aimed at reaching a free trade agreement has ended here with India's chief negotiator warning that Europe must 'also give' if the deal were to be concluded within an agreed deadline.

The negotiators, working under a strict mandate to wrap up the agreement by the end of 2008, began the latest round last week with the 27-nation European Union making initial offers in trade in goods, said India's chief negotiator Rahul Khullar.

'But progress was slow in the areas of services and investments. This agreement can happen, but the tempo depends on how seriously Europe takes the issue,' Khullar told IANS, adding: 'This not about take alone, but also give.'

'This is not just any old agreement. There are no free rides here and there can be no non-trade conditionality on settled issues.

'Any party to do that risks jeopardising the agreement,' he warned.

New Delhi attaches a great deal of importance to the negotiations, as this is the first bilateral free trade agreement that India is entering into with a major economic bloc.

However, differences have cropped up over what India views as protectionist measures, such as EU barriers on the entry of skilled Indians who want to live and work in Europe, and over some Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT).

Many Indian agricultural exporters have felt frustrated by the EU's insistence on safety standards, which fall under what the World Trade Organization calls Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) Measures.

There is said to be no ready acceptance among the Europeans that this could be a potential problem.

A landmark EU law, known as Reach - an acronym for Registration, Evaluation and Authorisation of Chemicals - is another trade barrier to Indian chemical exports, particularly for small exporters, Khullar said.

'There is huge manufacturing of chemicals in India but they will be knocked out by Reach,' which puts the onus on businesses to show that the chemicals they produce are safe, he added.

EU-India trade has grown impressively over the years, from 4.4 billion Euros in 1980 to over 46 billion Euros in 2006. Trade with the EU accounts for nearly 20 percent of India's exports and imports, which makes the EU, as a bloc, India's largest trading partner.

(c) Indo-Asian News Service

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