The first meeting of the EU-India Trade and Technology Council (TTC) is taking place on Tuesday 16 May in Brussels, after which a joint statement is expected to be adopted. Permanent Representatives of the Member States approved a revised version of the declaration on Monday 15 May and submitted it on the same day. EUROPE has had access to this latest draft as well as to the penultimate one below (12 May), which has undergone two minor changes (https://aeur.eu/f/6vw ).
The European Commission, which was responsible for proposing and negotiating the text, brought together the Member States around a formulation that takes into account Indian concerns about the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM). “The sides will also intensify their engagement to address the issues that emerge in implementation of carbon border measures”, it proposed.
In general, India is concerned about European environmental legislation, whether it be recent tools such as CBAM or EU requirements for its trade agreements. However, this can be left out of the statement. Indeed, it specifies that negotiations on trade, investment protection and geographical indications agreements between the EU and India are taking place in parallel, independently of the TTC’s work.
Moreover, the joint statement describes the objectives and future work of the three working groups, which are divided up as follows: 1) strategic technologies, digital governance and digital connectivity; 2) green and clean technologies; 3) trade, investment and resilient value chains.
It should be noted that a sentence was added at the beginning of the statement regarding the global context, which allows for a slight position on the war in Ukraine: “Both sides emphasised the importance of the rules-based international order and full respect for the principles of sovereignty, territorial integrity, transparency and peaceful resolution of disputes”.
In order to allow for joint adoption, EU finance ministers still need to approve the text on Tuesday 16 May.
For her part, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, was already meeting with Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, Minister of Commerce Piyush Goyal and Minister of State for Entrepreneurship, Electronics and Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar on the evening of Monday 15 May.
The Indian Minister of Railways, Ashwini Vaishnaw, was initially scheduled to attend, but will eventually be replaced by Mr Chandrasekhar. (Original version in French by Léa Marchal)