Public procurement, services top Indo-EU trade pact talks

Font Size

Print

Feedback

Email

Discuss

New Delhi, Jul 8 : mode of action by swiftly exchanging information if some consignments are found to be of serious and immediate risk to their consumers’ safety and health. These measures prevent or restrict the marketing and use of such “harmful” products. According to India, in some instances this could be seen as a paranoid reaction from the EU authorities that would potentially harm exports from India.

Also, India has pitched for a joint appeal system, where by the affected exporters can file an appeal against a laboratory report given by either EU or India, on the basis of which the consignments were rejected. India has demanded that these two new proposals be incorporated in the final draft of the FTA. Though India had initially set a deadline of 2008-end for the conclusion of FTA talks, this is unlikely to be met owing to these differences.

India wants EU to cut their high tariff and support on agricultural products, EU is reluctant to do so. Instead, they want India to reduce its industrial tariffs, which is already a contentious issue in the Non Agricultural Market Access (NAMA) negotiations in WTO’s Doha Round. India also wanted non-trade and extraneous issues like animal welfare and labour to be kept out of talks.

Commerce and industry minister Kamal Nath has said that India has offered to include 90% of its items that it trades with the EU to be included in the agreement, while it wants the EU to bring 95% of their tradeable items to be a part of the pact. EU trade commissioner Peter Mandelson had wanted India to eliminate barriers to trade in services and have more deep talks on intellectual property protection.