Hardeining its position on the stalled India-EU Free Trade Agreement (FTA) talks, the 27-nation European Union has said that India will have to be more transparent and objective in sharing information and data on marginalisation of several groups in its territory and the steps it has taken to offset the impact of climate change before the next round of talks begins. “We need more information on India’s role on climate change and what it is doing to alleviate the marginalised groups in the country,” Lena Kolarska Bobinska, member of European Parliament and vice-chairwoman for the delegation on relations with India, said.

The India-EU FTA negotiations which started almost two years back have been struck because of the hardening of positions on both sides. While India has insisted that issues like climate change and human rights should be kept out of the purview of FTA negotiations, the EU feels that they should be addressed first before the negotiations can proceed on improving India-EU trade that aggregated $73 billion in 2007-08.

On the question of tariff barriers on major goods and services, EU officials said there is some sort of agreement on the removal of tariff barriers on 90 per cent of goods and services in the next seven years. “Discussions are going on the remaining 10 per cent of goods and services,” the officials said.

The FTA talks have been the cornerstone of the India-EU relationship and the coming summit meeting between the two is expected to take the discussions further.

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