PIB | 04 Jul, 2022
India
and the European Union concluded the first round of negotiations for
India-EU Trade and Investment Agreements, including the Geographical
Indicators (GI), in New Delhi recently.
India’s FTA negotiations
were led by Chief Negotiator Ms. Nidhi Mani Tripathi, Joint Secretary,
Department of Commerce and EU was represented by its Chief Negotiator,
Mr. Christophe Kiener.
The
week-long negotiations were held in a hybrid fashion – with some of the
teams meeting in Delhi and the majority of officials joining virtually
hybrid fashion.
During this Round 52 technical Sessions covering 18
policy areas of FTA and 7 Sessions on Investment Protection and GIs were
held.
The second round of negotiations is scheduled to take place in September 2022 at Brussels.
The
negotiations were launched by Shri Piyush Goyal Minister for Commerce
& Industry and European Commission’s Executive Vice President Mr.
Valdis Dombrovskis at Brussels last month.
India’s
bilateral trade with EU amounted to USD 116.36 billion in 2021-22.
Despite the global disruptions, the bilateral trade achieved an
impressive annual growth of 43.5% in 2021-22. Currently EU is India’s
second largest trading partner after US, and the second largest
destination for Indian exports.
The trade agreement with EU would help
India in further expanding and diversifying its exports of goods and
services, including securing the value chains. Both sides are aiming for
the trade negotiations to be broad-based, balanced, and comprehensive,
based on the principles of fairness and reciprocity.