A free trade agreement which will bring down various barriers between India and the 27-member European Union (EU) is expected to be concluded next year.

Two rounds of formal negotiations on the modalities to lower the barriers have already been completed. The third round is to be held next month, followed by another session in February, according to Alexander Spachis, Minister-Counsellor, European Union, Delegation of European Commission to India.

He told reporters recently on the eve of a symposium on ‘India and the European Union: beyond the headlines’, that India-EU trade was "relatively healthy" but well below the potential.

While EU was the biggest trading partner of India, the latter was the 13th partner of EU. The symposium is being organised by the EU, Alliance Francaise, Goethe-Zentrum and OU to mark 50 years of EU.

Dr. Spachis stated that there was practically no imbalance in trade with imports and exports evenly matched at $ 20 billion.

He visualised doubling of two-way trade in the next few years once the tariffs were lowered.

He said a major science and technology agreement would be signed during the eighth EU-India summit to be held at Delhi later this month. Cooperation among the scientific institutions was already quite good and the European Research Programme was now open to Indian organisations.

There were 45 Indian participants in the first phase. The next phase would be launched soon. He said EU had already increased the scholarships for Indian students to 500 a year.

Mr. Rakesh Joshi

Joshi Enterprise

Manager, Joshi Enterprise
Dispur, India

Free Member, Joined :02/02/2007
No of Topics Posted : 122
Reply/Comments : 16