Resuming free trade talks with EU is political and strategic: Foreign Minister S Jaishankar

The decision by India and the EU to resume free trade talks was not a capricious one, but a call taken after the two sides felt confident, says Foreign Minister S Jaishankar. He described it as political and strategic.

“Connectivity, data, technology and even the climate challenge – all of this is going to require us to work together more closely,” Jaishankar said. “We have crossed a threshold, we have seen more momentum more energy in the relationship.”

Augusto Santos Silva, Portugese foreign minister, at an online event hosted by Observer Research Foundation said India was one of EU’s key partners in Asia, not China, which he described as a selective partner, competitor and systemic rival. “The way we see institutions, the way we see political fundamentals, the way we see human rights, the way we see the role of civil society is very different when you see from the point of view of Brussels or when you speak from the view of Beijing.” Silva said this is the reason India is their partner in Asia.

He also highlighted that the initially, the European Union was paying less attention to India than it should have. “We needed to focus on this issue at the European level. The EU level strategy for the Indo-Pacific was the purpose of the India-EU Leaders’ meeting that was held in virtual format in Porto last month,” Silva said. “The main results of the summit were political, the resumption of a high level dialogue between the two largest democracies, India and the EU, the improvement of sectoral partnerships that are very, very important, the connectivity partnership and the resumption of the free trade talks.”

Jaishankar on his part said the areas that the two partners would be looking at would be technology and artificial intelligence. “Data security, cyber security and privacy, EU and their conversations with big tech were all issues of interest to India,” he said and added that connectivity in general and digital connectivity in particular was a fairly fertile area to be explored between India and the EU.

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In regards to patent waiver for COVID-19 vaccines, there was a noted difference between the two sides. Silva said the EU was of the view that innovation and research and development needed to be preserved given that there were predictions of future waves of the COVID-19 pandemic. Jaishankar pointed out that to scale up vaccine production to meet the challenges for inoculating the world, Europe needed to keep open supply chains as well as consider a waiver of patents as proposed by India and South Africa at the WTO.