The Hindu : WTO meet: EU official holds talks with India

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Apr 12, 2003

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WTO meet: EU official holds talks with India

By Sushma Ramachandran

NEW DELHI APRIL 11. Even as the European Union is trying hard to persuade India to agree to a discussion on the four "Singapore issues" at the Cancun ministerial conference of the World Trade Organisation, it has hinted that it may be able to provide support to the key Indian demand for liberalisation in the services negotiations.

Though the trade off between the two areas is still far away, the European Union is making efforts to sell India's proposal for easier movement of natural persons to member countries.

Herve Jouanjean, visiting Director, WTO Affairs of the European Commission, held a marathon session of talks stretching over nine hours on Thursday with Commerce Ministry officials on the nitty-gritty of these proposals in the follow up to the earlier visit of the European Commission's Trade Commissioner, Pascal Lamy.

He told The Hindu after the talks that the discussions were meant to focus on areas of convergence between the two trading partners and also narrow down the differences in those areas. Though Mr. Lamy had expressed optimism over the prospect of India agreeing to the Singapore issues, Mr. Jouanjean was not so positive as he smiling described the Indian negotiators as "very hard (to convince)".

On movement of natural persons, which is the area India is trying to push to enable easier functioning of its professionals, especially in the software sector abroad, he said: "we are trying to push the debate among the member states". But he warned that it would not be easy in view of immigration and unemployment concerns among the European Union countries. At present, there are relatively large sections with long-lasting unemployment in countries such as France.

Despite this natural resistance, Mr. Jouanjean said, the European Union's offer would soon be sent to Geneva. "We are working on all elements including mode 4". At the same time, he is trying to convince Indian negotiators of the relevance and significance of the Singapore issues. In the case of investment, he said it would give India a better level playing field instead of entering into bilateral agreements where it would have to give in on many issues. He also felt that the existing investment regime here was "not predictable", while investors sought a stable environment. That could be provided only by a multilateral agreement which would be a broad framework type of mechanism.

On the issue of market access for non-agricultural products which was discussed on Thursday, he said the European Union was prepared to come down to "nearly zero tariff for textiles and footwear but on the basis of reciprocity rather than less than reciprocity as is the Indian proposal".

But the European Union was ready to take into account the "special needs" of its trading partners and was prepared to examine, product wise, the areas in which better market access was being sought by India. He welcomed the latest Exim policy and the removal of quantitative restrictions on more products.

Mr. Jouanjean, who will be discussing agriculture and environment issues today, did not agree that the sanitary and phytosanitary standards were continually being moved upwards by developed countries. He said it was not a case of protection since the European Union did not produce items such as shrimps and the standards were linked to scientific guidelines.

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