New Delhi: Differences over "extraneous
issues" of child labour and environment seem to have widened
between India and the European Union, a development that may
further delay reaching a trade opening pact between them.
However, on the eve of the India-EU Summit tomorrow, the
two sides agreed that they should more than double their
trade to USD 200 billion by 2013 with the help of the
'Bilateral Trade and Investment Agreement', under negotiations
for the last three years.
India does not want to tread an unfamiliar negotiating
track that is outside the framework of the WTO, which the EU
insists, Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma said
after his meeting with EU Trade Commissioner Catherine Ashton
here.
Sharma said Indian trade negotiators are familiar and
comfortable within the architecture of the World Trade
Organisation. "There is no need to have a new process where we
are not familiar," he said.
"They are talking of a new architecture," Sharma told
reporters after his meeting with Ashton and Swedish Trade
Minister Ewa Bjorling.
He said "extraneous" issues like child labour and
environment are counterproductive and would further delay
conclusion of the trade pact for which negotiations have been
dragging for the last three years.
The European Commission in its statement said the Summit
would underline the joint commitment to achieve progress in
the negotiations on a bilateral trade and investment
agreement.
Meanwhile, industry body FICCI asked the EU not to link
'non-trade issues' with the broad-based trade and investment
agreement.
"Indian business is firmly against including non-trade
areas like labour standards, environment and climate
change-related issues into the FTA," FICCI Secretary General
Amit Mitra said.
He said any such attempt would be counter-productive and
inhibit the possibility of an FTA with EU.
"While we do not undermine the importance of these
issues, in our view they cannot be linked with trade and
investment, and need to be addressed in appropriate platforms
such as the ILO and similar agencies," he said.
Bureau Report