The European Union (EU) is committed to a free trade agreement (FTA) with India and is for timely relaunching of negotiations for this, the bloc's Ambassador to India Tomasz Kozlowski said on Tuesday.
"I would like to underline that the European Union is committed to negotiate and to conclude a free trade agreement, both trade and investment agreement, with India," Kozlowski said in a media roundtable here.
He said that in the India-EU Summit here last year, both sides agreed to a timely relaunch of these negotiations for the proposed Broad-based Trade and Investment Agreement (BTIA).
Negotiations for the BTIA started in 2007 but were put on hold in 2015. In all, 16 rounds of negotiations have been held.
Kozlowski said that the chief negotiators for the BTIA from both sides held an informal meeting in November last year and the next meeting "will be held soon".
"It means that we are very much engaged in the process of discussing a possible agreement.
"What we are doing now is healthy holding of a big number of expert-level meetings through video conferences and face-to-face (meetings) to discuss specific topics and issues," he said, adding that these meetings were not taking stock of what happened earlier.
"We are updating each other of our positions, of our interests related to specific issues, how far we may go," he said.
"During the last few years, a lot of developments have happened both within the European Union and India, I mean, in economic policies and legislative framework for economic activities."
Kozlowski said that after India renounced its bilateral investment treaties (BITs) with all countries, investments from European nations are now not protected.
India has terminated all BITs following a new BIT model New Delhi released in December 2015.
The 28 EU member-states have now passed on the responsibility of investment protection negotiations to the EU.
Kozlowski said that the EU hoped that an investment protection chapter will be part of the BTIA being envisaged.
Clarifying that there is no deadline for the BTIA, he said: "Both sides have declared their interest to have a comprehensive, mutually beneficial agreement which will establish a framework for our trade and investment for the future."
Kozlowski said that the EU economy has embarked on a path of steady growth.
"The EU is no longer in the recovery stage. Its GDP growth is now at 2.5 per cent and in the last quarter it was at 2.7 per cent," he said.
The EU is India's largest trading partner with bialteral trade crossing 100 billion euros in the last financial year and Kozlowski said that this would continue to be so even after Britain exits the 28-nation bloc.
He stressed that the EU-India relationship went much beyond trade and investment and was now proceeding on two important directions: foreign policy and security on one side and the EU's participation in India's flagship economic programmes on the other.
Stating that designation of terrorists is new aspect of the relationship, he said both sides are also cooperating on countering the threat of radicalisation online.
Clean energy and climate change are among the areas that the EU can contribute to India's growth, Kozlowski said.
--IANS
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