India is ready to quickly sign and implement the “mother of all trade deals” reached with the European Union in January, the country’s ambassador to the European Union, Saurabh Kumar, told Euronews’ flagship morning show Europe Today.
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“As soon as the EU is able to complete its internal processes, we will be able to sign the agreement,” Ambassador Kumar said in an interview with Maria Tadeo, EU editor of Euronews.
“We are confident that the agreement will be signed very quickly,” Ambassador Kumar added. “It is my understanding that both parties will work quickly to have the agreement signed as quickly as possible.”
The free trade deal signed last month promises to double EU exports to India by 2032 by cutting tariffs on around 96% of EU exports to that country, saving around €4 billion a year in tariffs for European businesses. At the same time, for India, the deal offered some relief after the United States imposed prohibitive sanctions on that country.
At its full potential, the deal creates a market of 2 billion people.
The timing of the deal is important as both sides seek to reduce risks from U.S. trade policy and China’s growing surplus with the rest of the world, while holding large reserves of critical minerals. Ambassador Kumar hailed the agreement as a “strategic” victory in a “multipolar world”.
“The EU and India are important poles in this configuration,” he explained, adding that cooperation between the EU and India is crucial “for our mutual benefit as well as for global stability”.
Asked if Trump’s aggressive trade policies had been a catalyst for the deal, he said “the India-EU relationship stands on its own” and “has its own merits”, but acknowledged the need to reduce excessive dependencies in a more volatile trade environment.
“Excessive dependencies are not good. There is a need to build redundancies into supply chains to have multiple options,” the ambassador explained.
“India-EU FTA is also very important with a view to de-risking our respective economies, creating layoffs, having more manufacturing options and I think in this regard the agreement will serve a very useful purpose,” he added.
A “new phase” of EU-India collaboration
The ambassador spoke to Euronews as India welcomes world leaders, including French President Emmanuel Macron and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, to the conference. India-AI Impact Summit in New Delhi.
The ambassador hailed technology and defense as important areas of collaboration as EU-India relations enter a “new phase”. Meanwhile, the EU also signed a security and defense partnership on the sidelines of the EU-India summit.
“As we move forward, defense industries, especially defense industries, as well as technological aspects will become more important in EU-India relations,” he explained.
Watch the full interview in the video player above.
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