EU and India conclude free trade deal after two decades of talks
The European Commission says the pact, agreed on 27 January, is the largest trade deal either side has ever signed.
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The European Commission announced on 27 January that the EU and India have concluded negotiations for a free trade agreement, calling it the largest such deal either side has ever concluded, the Commission said in a press release.
The Commission said India will grant the EU tariff reductions that none of its other trading partners have received, according to CNBC. Car tariffs will fall gradually from 110% to as low as 10%, and tariffs on car parts will be eliminated entirely after five to ten years, the Commission said, according to KPMG.
The agreement covers nearly two billion people and close to a quarter of global economic output, making it the biggest bilateral trade pact either side has signed, Yahoo Finance reported. Talks began nearly 20 years ago, were paused in 2013 and resumed in 2022. In May last year, India's Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal and EU Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič had reaffirmed a target of finishing by the end of 2025, a deadline the two sides missed by about a month, All India Radio reported.
For companies exporting cars and car parts into India, the phased tariff cuts change the arithmetic of doing business there over the next decade, while European exporters more broadly gain terms that competitors from outside the deal do not have.