NEW DELHI: India and the European Union have agreed to expedite the ongoing negotiations for a free trade agreement by finding convergence on all issues, an official statement said.

The issue was raised during a meeting in Brussels between Piyush Goyal, the minister of commerce and industry, Valdis Dombrovskis, the commissioner of the European Union for trade and the executive vice-president of the European Commission.

They connected during the first Ministerial meeting of the Trade and Technology Council (TTC) between India and the European Union. Also, senior officials from both sides were present during the meeting.

According to the commerce ministry, "They emphasised the need for accelerating the ongoing FTA negotiations by finding convergence on all issues while taking into account the mutual sensitivities, including on market access for balanced and meaningful outcomes that would support the economies and employment on both sides."

According to the statement, both parties reaffirmed their commitment to collaborating on matters related to the dispute settlement process, subsidies for agriculture and fisheries, e-commerce moratoria, and domestic law that are all agreed priorities for WTO (World Trade Organisation) reforms.

It continued that both parties understood the importance of building on their shared objectives in order to pursue solutions based on agreement that would help the lives and food security of millions of people in India as well as in a sizable portion of the developing world. 

Along with that, Goyal and Dombrovskis co-chaired a meeting of the Working Group 3-stakeholders. Participants in the conference included representatives from the EU and India. Trade, investment, and resilient supply chains are the three main topics of group 3. Representatives from important European business associations like Business Europe, Digital Europe, Food Drinks Europe, and Copa-Cogeca were present on the EU side.

The delegation of Indian business leaders that attended the meeting in person included representatives from the chemical, metals, textile, digital infrastructure, steel, and agri-food industries. Other sectors including the maritime and logistics industries were represented virtually.

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